PERSONAL EVANGELISM 
AMONG STUDENTS 

STEWART- WRIGHT 




PERSONAL EVANGELISM 
AMONG STUDENTS 



THE PRACTICE OF FRIENDSHIP 
SERIES 

i. The Practice of Friendship [In Army and Navy] 

(Ready) 

2. Personal Evangelism among Students (Ready) 

3. The Enrichment of Community Life 

(In Preparation) 



Personal Evangelism 
Among Students 



STUDIES IN THE PRACTICE OF FRIENDSHIP IN 
SCHOOL AND COLLEGE 



GEORGE STEWART, Jr., 

General Secretary Yale Y. M. C. A. 
and 

HENRY B. WRIGHT, 

Clement Professor of Christian Methods, Yale University 




ASSOCIATION PRESS 

New York : 347 Madison Avbnui 
1920 



& 

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t^> 



Copyright, 1920, by 

The International Committee of 

Young Men's Christian Associations 



©CI.A571985 



1 1320 



According to your faith be it done unto you. 

Matt. 9:29. 

To 
JOHN R. MOTT 

Looking unto the promise of God, he wavered not 
through unbelief, but waxed strong through faith, 
giving glory to God, and being fully assured that what 
he had promised he was able also to perform. 

Romans 4: 20, 21. 



PREFACE 

This volume is the second of a series of handbooks which 
attempt to suggest some of the tested methods by which 
Christianity may be effectively presented to specialized groups 
of men. The first volume dealt with the "Practice of Friend- 
ship in Army and Navy." It was issued during the second 
year of our participation in the European conflict, and 
represented the combined experience of enlisted man, officer, 
and War Work Secretary in the approach to the soldier and 
sailor mind under the peculiar strain and abnormal conditions 
of war. In the present volume, "Personal Evangelism 
among Students," a similar attempt has been made to 
present the combined experience of pupil, teacher, and 
Student Secretary, in their efforts to reveal Christian truth to 
men during a less abnormal but still somewhat disturbed 
period — the restless years of higher education. 

Yale University. 
February 18, 1920. 



CONTENTS 

PART 1. PERSONAL EVANGELISM AMONG STU- 
DENTS THROUGH THE PRACTICE OF 
FRIENDSHIP— GUIDING PRINCIPLES 

I. What Are We Trying to Do? 3 

Personal Evangelism — a Definition. 

Why Necessary among Students. 

The Crisis in the Change from Secondary to Higher 

Education. 
Where the Laissez-Faire Doctrine Breaks Down. 
The Friendly Guidance of Student Initiative. 
The Nature of the Ministry to Unrest. 

II. Some Fallacies of the Collective Student 

Mind 11 

"A Man Must Know before He Can Do." 
Special Moral Codes for Special Groups. 
The Exaltation of Piety above Duty. 
"All a Man Needs to Do Is to Be Square." 
Twentieth Century Student Pharisaism. 
The Substitution of Personal Influence for Personal 
Effort. 

III. To Whom Are We Sent ? 22 

The Ministry to the Impoverished. 
The Ministry to the Broken-Hearted. 
The Ministry to the Sin-Bound. 
The Ministry to the Blind. 
The Ministry to the Bruised 



CONTENTS 

IV. Some Characteristics of Students as a Class 29 
Individualism. 
Group Consciousness. 
Idealism. 

Debonair Dignity. 
The Caste Spirit. 
Mental Flux. 



The Processes of Friendship 37 

The Gifts of a Friend. 
The Self-Revelations of a Friend. 
The Wounds of a Friend. 
The Sacrifices of a Friend. 



VI. The Goal of the Practice of Friendship. ... 46 
God's First-Best Plan for Every Life. 
Helping Men to Choose the Best. 



PART II. THE PRACTICE OF FRIENDSHIP AMONG 
STUDENTS 

I. Some Essential Qualifications for the 

Practitioner 51 

Experience. 

Acquaintance with the Sources of Divine Power. 

Constant Cultivation of the Spirit of Youth. 

Loyalty to Truth. 

Persistent Mental and Spiritual Endeavor. 

The Practice of Sympathy. 

Living the Truth that Is Preached. 



CONTENTS xi 

II. The Practice of Friendship between the 
Christian Association Secretary and 

the Students 57 

In the Office. 

The Ministry of the Example of Order and System. 
Vocational Guidance. 

The Interview with the Man Who Is Down. 
Serving the Bereaved and the Sick. 
Entertaining the Stranger. 
Material Assistance to the Needy. 
A Mutual Third Party between Faculty and Stu- 
dents. 
Peacemaking among College Mates. 
Helping the Man Who Misses Out. 
The Energizing of Men to Do Their Best. 

III. The Practice of Friendship between College 

Mates 66 

Upperclass Leadership of Underclassmen. 

The Opportunities of a Roommate. 

In the Fraternities and Other Social Groups. 

In Organized Athletics. 

Through College Journalism. 

At Class and Alumni Gatherings. 

[V. The Practice of Friendship between the 

Faculty and the Students 71 

Surmounting the Difficulties of Specialization and 

of Official Relationship. 
The Practice of Friendship in the Classroom. 
Corrective Discipline as an Act of Friendship. 
The Ministry of Informal Counsel. 
Witnessing to a Christian Philosophy of Life. 



PART I 

PERSONAL EVANGELISM AMONG 
STUDENTS THROUGH THE PRAC- 
TICE OF FRIENDSHIP 

Guiding Principles 



"O spirit of the everlasting boy, 

Alert, elate, 
And confident that life is good, 
Thou knockest boldly at the gate, 

In hopeful hardihood, 
Eager to enter and enjoy 

Thy new estate. 

"Through the old house thou runnest everywhere, 
Bringing a breath of folly and fresh air. 
Ready to make a treasure of each toy, 
Or break them all in discontented mood; 

Fearless of Fate, 
Yet strangely fearful of a comrade's laugh; 
Reckless and timid, hard and sensitive ; 
In talk a rebel, full of mocking chaff, 

At heart devout conservative; 
In love with love, yet hating to be kissed ; 

Inveterate optimist, 

And judge severe, 
In reason cloudy but in feeling clear; 
Keen critic, ardent hero-worshipper, 
Impatient of restraint in little ways, 

Yet ever ready to confer 
On chosen leaders boundless power and praise; 
Adventurous spirit burning to explore 
Untrodden paths where hidden danger lies, 
And homesick heart looking with wistful eyes 
Through every twilight to a mother's door ; 
Thou daring, darling, inconsistent boy, 

How dull the world would be 
Without thy presence, dear barbarian, 
And happy lord of high futurity ! 
Be what thou art, our trouble and our joy, 
Our hardest problem and our brightest hope ! 
And while thine elders lead thee up the slope 
Of knowledge, let them learn from teaching thee 
That vital joy is part of nature's plan, 
And he who keeps the spirit of the boy 
Shall gladly grow to be a happy man." 

Henry van Dyke. 



CHAPTER I 
WHAT ARE WE TRYING TO DO? 
Personal Evangelism — a Definition 

Evangelism is the art of helping men in their quest for a 
complete life. Personal evangelism is the attempt to ac- 
complish this through the processes of friendship. The 
essential element in personal evangelism is a persuasive spir- 
itual appeal which introduces men to Jesus Christ, endeavors 
to persuade them to take Him as the Way to complete living, 
and seeks to induce those who were formerly "consciously 
inferior, wrong, divided, and unhappy" to become "consciously 
superior, right, united, and happy" through a deliberate 
act of the will in laying hold of a divine power outside them- 
selves. You and I cannot make men righteous, or peaceful, 
or joyful. Our task is simply that of guides to point the way. 
Whether or not a man will take the way depends, after all 
has been said and done, solely on his own conscious act of 
decision. We may help a man to come to the place where 
he is ready to make that decision, or we may hinder him from 
it. We may, through undue pressure, persuade him to say 
he has taken the way, when he has not. We may even force 
him into the way for a little season, but we cannot compel 
him to travel it for long unless he deliberately and whole- 
heartedly chooses to do so. The object of personal evangel- 
ism is to persuade men through the ministry of friendship to 
decide deliberately and whole-heartedly to take that Way 
which leads to fullness of life. 

Why Necessary among Students 
To no special group of men is such a ministry of friendly 
3 



4 PERSONAL EVANGELISM AMONG STUDENTS 

guidance more necessary than to the student class. The 
outstanding characteristic of the adolescent in the years of 
higher education is mental, moral, and spiritual wandering 
and unrest. In the English and continental universities this 
condition is reflected in the tradition of the Wander jahr, or 
year of orientation at the close of academic study, when 
theory and practice are supposed to be reconciled by some 
months of travel and contact with the world. The period 
of storm and stress which higher education brings is normal 
and inevitable. Life is at its beginning and, because of the 
uncertainties of vocation and of future relationships to home, 
church, and state, lacks direction and purpose. In a very 
true sense, during these years the minds and souls of men 
are "lost"— not in the old theological sense as those who by 
a deliberate act of self-will have rejected what they know to 
be their duty, but in the sense in which Jesus invariably used 
the word when with great tenderness He looked upon men 
"distressed and scattered as sheep not having a shepherd." 
They are lost because they do not know the road. This is but 
another way of saying that school boys and college men are 
constantly engaged in a quest for ideals, or are seeking to 
establish a philosophy of life. They are bound to find some 
' way and ultimately to emerge with some fixed philosophy. 
It is the rare privilege of all true friends of men to see to 
it that, in these years of uncertainty, they find the right one. 

The Crisis in the Change from Secondary to Higher 
Education 
The change from the constant and more autocratic super- 
vision necessary in the earlier years of the preparatory school, 
where the majority of a boy's decisions are made for him, to 
the larger freedom of the higher forms of the fitting school 
and of academic life marks the passing from boyhood to 
manhood. Sometimes this transition is most abrupt, from 



WHAT ARE WE TRYING TO DO? 5 

a school where very rigid restrictions have been in force 
until the day of graduation, to a university where complete 
freedom is granted from the first day of Freshman year. In 
such cases, if students are left to themselves, the results are 
apt to be disastrous in the extreme. To allow men the enjoy- 
ment of new privileges with no understanding of their proper 
use, is a hazardous experiment. The student, only recently 
freed from supervision, drinks long and deep of the new 
freedom, which he is too apt to regard as a right and not a 
responsibility. He resents any attempt on the part of others 
to interfere with his newly acquired liberties. We must be 
prepared to find this same attitude in every class that enters 
a college or university, and to see these same experiments 
with liberty tried over and over again. 

The refusal to learn from experience and the insistence on 
the right of experiment must never make us resentful or 
impatient. Our business is not to prevent the experiment, but 
to see that the issues of it are right. We must take as our 
irrevocable and unchanging creed the doctrine of a great 
student of adolescence: "Young men are often told that 
conceit and wilfulness are their most marked characteristics. 
I do not believe it. Their highest capacity is that of inspira- 
tion. They do not readily take advice ; they resent scolding ; 
they rebel utterly against force; but they yield with the 
certainty of gravitation to personal influence." In the hour 
I of liberty heading towards license there is but one form of 
guidance which students will accept. But this, if it be 
genuine, they rarely refuse. It is the contagion of another's 
personality working through the processes of friendship. It 
is a service which costs in time, in physical reserve, and in 
material comfort, and that is why many men refuse to render 
it. But it is service which any man can perform, for it 
requires neither special gifts of genius nor technical prepara- 
tion. To pass by on the other side when we see men in 



6 PERSONAL EVANGELISM AMONG STUDENTS 

distress on the Jericho road, and are able to render aid, is 
not merely to avoid an obvious duty but it is to miss the road 
to abundant life ourselves. 

Where the Laissez-Faire Doctrine Breaks Down 

There are many who argue that the student should be left 
to work his way out of this mental and moral chaos alone; 
that strong men are developed by struggle, and that the 
weeding-out process is inevitable. The implications of such 
a point of view are that man is his brother's keeper up to the 
age of seventeen or eighteen, but that after that time responsi- 
bility ceases; and that in order that a few may be saved 
intellectually or morally, many must be lost. Such a theory 
manifestly has no place for the doctrine of the survival of 
the unfit. It sounds attractive, but in practice it falls under 
serious suspicion for several reasons. In the first place, it 
is altogether too comfortable a doctrine with which we may 
justify our refusal to engage in the hardest and most costly 
work in the world — the work of friendship. It permits 
leisure for pet schemes and is a plausible excuse for an 
unwillingness to brook interruptions in one's prearranged 
work or pleasure. In the second place, even its most ardent 
advocates have not been willing to carry the doctrine out 
to its logical conclusion. They have never objected to the 
introduction of welfare agencies or a specialized morale 
officer upon whose shoulders could be placed the burden of 
the service of friendship which, because of its personal cost, 
they refuse to give. Indeed, many indications would seem 
to show that, far from opposing, they have secretly welcomed 
such assistance. But we now know — thanks to the experi- 
ence in the Army — that valuable as are the services of these 
specialized agencies as substitutes or as supplements, they 
can never take the place of one thing. And it is here that 
the laissez-faire doctrine breaks down and breaks down 






WHAT ARE WE TRYING TO DO? 7 

completely. A company of soldiers, in the final analysis, 
despite all welfare agencies and morale officers, was pretty 
nearly what its captain and lieutenants were. And in the 
same way a class of students is essentially what its teachers 
and leaders are. If what these men should have supplied in 
friendly counsel and example — perhaps indirectly, but no less 
really and at no less cost to themselves than if directly — if 
this be lacking, the loss can never be fully made up by other 
supplementary agencies. To young men in the days of mental 
and moral chaos the forces of evil are presenting their argu- 
ments with logic and charm, These destructive forces are not 
content, on their part, to rest the issue of the case on the 
laissez-faire doctrine. Their appeal is constant and cumu- 
lative. Upon the shoulders of every physical, intellectual, 
social, or spiritual leader who touches the life of a single 
student lies a share of the heavy responsibility which cannot 
be delegated or evaded, not to make the choices of life for 
the mind in turmoil, but to see that it is given the light and 
guidance to make the right instead of the wrong choices. 
Silence by the advocates on the side of right, when the case 
of the forces of evil stands complete, generally results in 
but one thing — a verdict by the jury for that side of the case 
which has been presented. 

The Friendly Guidance of Student Initiative 

The emphasis on the voluntary principle of student initi- 
ative has been rightly characterized by one of the outstanding 
leaders of student thought in this generation as the secret of 
largest helpfulness. "You can do some things among 
students by legislation," he writes. "You can do some things 
indirectly; you can bring countless influences to bear from 
the outside ; but nothing will ever take the place of initiative 
coming from the students themselves." This is a great truth 
which must never be obscured ; but side by side with it, as its 



8 PERSONAL EVANGELISM AMONG STUDENTS 

complement and fulfilment, should be set another truth equally 
important. It is that which underlay Paul's command: "Be 
ye imitators of me even as I also am of Christ." In other 
words, the real source of initiative among most young men of 
the adolescent age is unconscious imitation of those whom 
they trust. To be able, from the vantage point of experience, 
to guide tactfully, through the processes of friendship, the 
restless initiative of men whose philosophies of life are yet 
unformed, is to make democracy safe for a college community 
and to justify the complete freedom of the later student 
years. To give oneself fully and freely to this delicate and 
essential ministry, at whatever cost, is to confess Christ before 
men, stated in modern terms which apply to all leaders, 
whether teachers, welfare workers, or classmates, to whom is 
committed the trust of the bodies, minds, hearts, and souls of 
men in the years of higher education. Either to refuse out- 
right to take part in this work, or to delegate what is one's 
proportionate share of it to others, is to deny our Lord. 

The Nature of the Ministry to Unrest 

Unrest in the days of higher education is due to a variety 
of causes and calls for a rich variety of ministries. That 
which has its source in the purely intellectual realm arises 
generally from the fact that the flood of new ideas which the 
richness of the curriculum affords has not as yet been 
appraised or correlated. The historical approach to many 
subjects of study requires that certain theories and philoso- 
phies of life which are now discredited be brought to light 
again in their historical setting. It is, of course, every 
teacher's intention that these theories shall be both presented 
and their fallacies exposed. But often in practice, owing to 
the inexperience of the teacher and his inability to cover all 
the ground mapped out for a recitation period, that which 
the teacher honestly intended to say in the last half of his 



WHAT ARE WE TRYING TO DO ? 9 

hour, but which as a matter of fact never reached the student, 
is the missing factor which leaves the latter intellectually and 
morally stranded. Again, illness or outside engagements 
often cause the student to be absent at the second hour 
devoted to the exposure of the fallacies of a false philosophy 
which has been presented in all its subtle attractiveness at the 
first hour, simply as a teaching device to arouse discussion and 
awaken intellectual curiosity. Those who have been priv- 
ileged to see the havoc wrought by half-truths in men's lives 
in an academic community begin to realize the full meaning 
of the scripture warning: "Be not many of you teachers, my 
brethren, knowing that we shall receive heavier judgment." 
But whether students miss the truth through the fault of their 
teachers, or because of their own irregularity, there is con- 
stantly needed the friendly ministry of the interpreter who 
shall serve as the reconciler of the old and the new and fill 
up what is lacking in half-truths and inadequate presentation. 

Some unrest has its roots in sin. Here the call is for the 
friendly touch of sympathy and the unfaltering statement of 
truth. Most men conscious of wrong-doing secretly crave 
to find the way out and to be free again. But they dread the 
personal humiliation which the revelation of their moral 
failure will bring. There is no more friendly act than to 
show a man the simple way out of sin, and to arouse in him 
not only the willingness but the desire to take it. 

There is a third kind of unrest which arises from neither 
intellectual nor moral causes. It might be characterized as 
social. It comes from the lack of definite ideals for the 
extra-curriculum activities in which so many men are 
absorbed. Something is wrong with the spirit of the 
fraternity or the team, but no one seems able to diagnose the 
trouble. Here friendship stands ready with intelligent 
counsel and concrete suggestion, which shall transform 
corporate life and processes as well as individuals through 



io PERSONAL EVANGELISM AMONG STUDENTS 

the revelation of the means of achieving in a group of men 
those spiritual forces which are the basis of all real esprit de 
corps. 

To suggest some of the practical ways in which such 
approaches of Christian friendship may be made to students 
to lead them to righteousness, joy, and peace in both their 
individual and corporate life, is the main object in the writing 
of this book. 



CHAPTER II 

SOME FALLACIES OF THE COLLECTIVE STUDENT 
MIND 

Before friendship can have its perfect work in the lives of 
the individuals who compose any organized group of men, it 
is necessary that traditional fallacies of the collective mind 
of that group, if any such exist, be frankly recognized, care- 
fully analyzed, and successfully combated and overthrown. 
Pacifism and the theory of salvation by battle-death are 
examples of such fallacies that had already insidiously gained 
a foothold in the collective mind of the army group during the 
early days of the War. The idea that the attitude of labor 
toward capital and of capital toward labor must be un- 
friendly is a widespread present-day fallacy of a similar sort 
that obsesses the collective industrial mind. Until the 
fallacies underlying such points of view have been exposed 
and their hold on the collective mind has been broken, there 
can be little permanent success in dealing with the individual. 

The collective student mind is peculiarly fertile ground for 
the planting and nurture of moral and spiritual fallacies. It 
is the mind of youth, and therefore impressionable. It func- 
tions in an environment which lacks that most effective of all 
correctives of false philosophies, the necessity that a man's 
creed should stand the test of the hard facts of life — the 
struggle for bread, the support of others, the actual battle 
with organized sin. This is especially true of the student 
who does not earn his way. He is likely to accept his creed 
as he accepts his support. He is prone to infer that because 
a majority adopt a point of view, it must therefore be right. 



12 PERSONAL EVANGELISM AMONG STUDENTS 

"A Man Must Know before He Can Do 

Probably the most common of all such fallacies of the 
student mind is that underlying the excuse advanced by many 
men for not participating actively in Christian work — that 
there is much in the Bible which cannot be understood or 
explained, and that the Gospel must be rationalized before it 
can be accepted as a way of life. It is not surprising that 
such a point of view should at first sight have great attrac- 
tiveness for men who are supposed to be primarily engaged 
in intellectual development. In some quarters the mere 
statement of this philosophy is thought to establish at once 
high intellectual standing. Yet a little honest reflection will 
convince any one of its inadequacy. In all spheres of life 
there is much which men live by, which they do not under- 
stand. The question is not, "Can it be explained ?" but "Does 
it work?" "By their fruits ye shall know them." 

The student thinks largely in terms of action. The 
volitional aspect of life is in the ascendency. His will is 
much in play. His religious impulses urge him to "lay hold 
on life" rather than to meditate or philosophize upon the 
religious verities, although he does seek a rational faith. The 
words of John 7:17 come with peculiar force to the men in 
our colleges and schools: "If any man willeth to do his will, 
he shall know of the teaching, whether it is of God, or 
whether I speak from myself." 

Students are constantly experimenting, weighing, testing, 
casting away, storing up, or laying aside material for future 
consideration. The substance out of which their lives are to 
be builded is being worked over day by day. At no other 
time of life are seemingly trivial choices and actions of such 
vital and eternal significance. 

Modern psychology has abandoned the idea that there is a 
separate "faculty" of the will or that there is any "organ" 



THE COLLECTIVE STUDENT MIND 13 

of spiritual perception as such, but one cannot escape the 
conviction that it is by the exercise of the function of 
volition that men grow into knowledge of the things divine. 
By the cumulative effect of a multitude of right choices we 
win our salvation. Experiment followed by verification, 
repeated in the laboratory of the spiritual life, will be for all 
who try it a cure for doubt and failure. "If any man willeth 
to do his will," let him decide to test it out again and again 
as in a physics laboratory, and "he shall know of the teach- 
ing, whether it is of God." The Scripture does not read, "If 
any man wisheth, or wanteth, or is thinking about doing 
God's will," but "If any man willeth to do his will, he shall 
know of the teaching." 

If a man is fighting desperately for personal purity, let him 
decide to take as helper the Lord Jesus Christ and to seek 
His aid in every temptation. He shall know the companion- 
ship of the great Friend of men and realize the blessedness 
of those who see God because they are pure in heart. If any 
man is hesitating, like the rich young ruler, before a life of 
service or a life of self, let him decide to do God's will and he 
shall know the meaning of the words, "He that loseth his life 
shall find it." If any man has a friend in disgrace, who 
is in need of some one to share the reproach with him, let 
such a one stand by his needy friend as Jesus stood by the 
abused of the earth, and he shall know the mystery of 
Calvary, that without the shedding of blood there is no remis- 
sion of sins. The atonement is easily understood by men who 
will to stand as friends to men. By the exercise of the will, 
by choosing the right habitually, voluntarily, constantly, by 
decision of character in spiritual matters, one attains unto 
a knowledge of the teachings and knows whether they be of 
God or of men. 

One would be untrue to the faith if he failed to state one of 
the fundamental principles of spiritual power, namely, sur- 



i 4 PERSONAL EVANGELISM AMONG STUDENTS 

render to the will of God. One can dodge the word surrender 
and apply all sorts of easy gospels as remedies for the soul 
diseases of men, but the words of Tennyson have the ring 
of one of the basal truths of Christianity in them : 

"Our wills are ours, we know not how; 
Our wills are ours to make them thine." 

A man can be master of his choice, but to attain the power 
to serve and bless comes from making Christ master of 
one's heart and soul. "If any man willeth to do his will, 
he shall know." 

Special Moral Codes for Special Groups 

Very often the conventions of our student communities 
foster insidious forms of dishonesty, which keep men from the 
four-square life which alone will bring spiritual satisfaction. 
Dishonesty in athletics, either when men are at play or in 
regard to their amateur status or rating, is not uncommon. 
Dishonesty in the class room, in the writing of theses, in the 
preparing of drawings, or in examinations, exists in a 
bewildering number of different forms in every educational 
institution. The secret breaking of fraternity agreements 
regarding the rushing of candidates, in order to secure 
desirable men, is justified as absolutely necessary by some 
men in the heat of competition. The plea generally advanced 
in all such cases is that of special moral codes for special 
groups, as is often the case in court when a student is on 
trial who has stolen a sign or a book. But no man, even the 
offender, secretly believes that such an excuse really holds. 
"Gentlemen do not cheat," says Walter Camp, "nor do they 
deceive themselves as to what cheating is." And Dean 
Charles R. Brown has disposed of this common heresy in 
words which should be brought to the attention of every 
student: "There ought to be in all college life rigid. 






THE COLLECTIVE STUDENT MIND 15 

unsympathetic honesty, like that of the bank or the counting- 
room. The perpetual effort after personal righteousness 
should stand as the abiding expression of the religious life." 

The Exaltation of Piety above Duty 

It is sometimes charged, with a certain measure of truth, 
that those who take upon themselves the spiritual leadership 
of the campus are unfaithful in their lessons. We must think 
clearly at this point, and realize that a school or college is 
primarily for the purpose of giving the student adequate 
instruction and training for life. It is true that such training 
comes through the informal influences and voluntary religious 
activities of college life, as well as by study and the formal 
exercises of the class-room. All that a man sees and feels 
and thinks is a part of his education. However, faithfulness 
in studies is a matter of such importance that it is difficult 
to imagine a situation which could call for continued neglect 
of it under the pretense of religious service. We are prone to 
escape the difficulty of thinking in the immediate opportunities 
of practical work. Hard, honest, consistent study is essential 
to the building of the best type of character on our school and 
college campuses. We fail to accomplish the task of propa- 
gating genuine Christianity as long as we justify habitual 
unfaithfulness in the main business of schools and colleges, 
namely, preparation for class-room exercises. 

A recent writer has well remarked: "Piety cannot be sub- 
stituted for honest mental toil. Mathematics is a kingdom 
which opens not to the man who has a devotional vocabulary, 
but to the man who is willing to do a deal of hard work. A 
student should pray. Every seeker after truth should keep 
as close to God as he can. Every one who would hold his 
brain at its highest point of efficiency ought to be in harmony 
with the Supreme Mind at which all our intellectual torches 
are lit, but prayer is not a substitute for intellectual exertion, 



16 PERSONAL EVANGELISM AMONG STUDENTS 

and only he goes into the kingdom of scholarship who is 
willing 'To scorn delights, and live laborious days.' " 

The evangel for our colleges and schools must not be a 
balm for lazy spirits, but a strong ferment that arouses and 
awakens men to do their best, especially in all matters of 
duty. "These ye ought to have done, and not to have left 
the others undone." 

"All a Man Needs to Do Is to Be Square" 

One of the stumbling blocks to s f udents who are interested 
in Christian work is the familiar statement : "All a man needs 
to do is to be square." This is perfectly true if a complete 
content is intended by the phrase. However, such a senti- 
ment very often acts as a cloak to cover a philosophy of life 
which careful scrutiny will prove to be inadequate and unfair 
in the best sense. 

Just because one returns borrowed goods, pays his debts, 
prepares his lessons, indulges in no particular vice, minds 
his own business and keeps out of jail, is no evidence that he 
has done his complete duty. A man owes something to his 
group, to his college, and to his generation. How often one 
hears a splendid specimen of manhood say: "I am moral; I 
feel no particular need of religion ; therefore I am indifferent 
to its claims and to its progress." Many such men do not need 
the support that some active Christians require to keep them 
morally straight. But are they really fair in their atttitude 
toward religion? Look back at their fathers and mothers, 
or at their grandparents, and one is very likely to see stalwart 
men and women who by their patient industry and sober life 
gave to the later generations strong bodies and active minds, 
handing down to their descendants a moral and spiritual 
overlap which equipped them to meet the temptations of the 
world with undaunted front. The son of such sturdy people 
reaps in his body and in his character the fruits of the labors 



THE COLLECTIVE STUDENT MIND 17 

of his forbears. Is such a man quite fair who does not, upon 
adequate presentation, see the benefit of such living and by 
an act of his will consciously strive to make some contribution 
to the moral and spiritual energies of his generation, in order 
that his sons and grandsons may have an inheritance such as 
was given to him? 

The evangel for students today must state in clarion tones 
that one cannot be thoroughly honest without rendering unto 
God the things that are God's, as well as paying tribute to 
Caesar. 

Twentieth Century Student Pharisaism 

As much as one dislikes to treat such a matter, a presenta- 
tion of our American college life that did not include 
present-day Pharisaism would be incomplete. That Pharisa- 
ism should exist in our schools is inherent in the situation. 
Here are able young men thrown together in all stages of 
maturity. Some of these are selfish, others are weak-willed, 
others are avaricious, whom later experience will teach the 
value of altruism. One is likely to think himself hard- 
pressed for funds in college. However, a comparison of the 
income of the average college man with that of the vast 
majority of men who are never able to matriculate will show 
that the former belongs to the more favored class. Constant 
association with able, well-dressed companions of good 
personality and social grace is apt to lead men in schools to 
feel superior to those who are not so fortunately situated. 
Tailor-made clothes and smart shoes do not always proclaim 
the man. Many sturdy souls from almost unknown colleges 
are emerging each year into positions of leadership, despite 
the uncouthness of their former environs. Style, elegance, 
and texture in apparel are insignificant when compared to 
winsomeness, reliability, and ruggedness in the qualities that 
make the soul. In a day when men from all the earth are 



i8 PERSONAL EVANGELISM AMONG STUDENTS 

coming to our colleges, men with different mores and habits, 
it is the part of Christians to judge in sympathy. There are 
no local gods that love only Harvard or Yale or Michigan 
men. The evangel that really meets the needs of our Ameri- 
can institutions of higher learning must never fail to persuade 
men that character is entitled to respect, in whatever garb or 
condition its possessor may appear. Wealth or social polish 
alone does not command such respect among honest-thinking 
men. Men may be favored by inheritance and good fortune 
in matters of wealth, but there is no known monopoly of 
character. 

Every college has a few men who enter college activities 
for selfish ends. "All their works they do to be seen of men ; 
for they make broad their phylacteries, and enlarge the 
borders of their garments, and love the chief place at feasts 
. . . and the salutations in the marketplaces, and to be called 
of men, Rabbi." Wherever a group of men live together, 
leadership is necessary and inevitable. To seize these posi- 
tions because of ability or influence alone and to utilize them 
for selfish ends, is the essence of Pharisaism. Writes a Yale 
man : "There are positions which inevitably afford power and 
leadership in the college world. There are activities through 
which a man is able to express himself effectively and influ- 
entially. It is right for us to hold all such in high regard, 
and never to confuse our contempt for a man who may gain 
such a position through selfish ends with the inherent honor 
of the office itself. . . . Let us never avoid any true oppor- 
tunity for leadership that may come to us in all honor, but let 
us never forget that true leadership means a cross, to be 
sustained only in a spirit of humility as regards one's self, and 
a sense of social responsibility towards our fellowmen." 

Modern Pharisaism also manifests itself in misleading 
impressionable men by sneering at morality and religion. 
There is often more dogmatism on the part of doubters and 



THE COLLECTIVE STUDENT MIND 19 

sceptics than on the part of the so-called orthodox. We 
must face the fact that some men on our campuses "shut the 
kingdom of heaven against men" : entering not in themselves, 
neither do they suffer them that are entering in to enter. 

Then, may we turn to the "vices of the virtuous." Many 
of us who call ourselves Christians become so petty and 
small that we fail to see the large realities of Christ's teach- 
ing. "Woe unto you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites ! for 
ye tithe mint and anise and cummin, and have left undone the 
weightier matters of the law, justice, and mercy, and faith." 
Recently a very devout and earnest teacher in one of our 
large schools remarked : "I get so very anxious over the boys ; 
their contrariness causes me to fairly hate them at times." 
Deep affection for men, as they are, will do much to fit us 
with the Christ-like spirit, for then only shall we be fitted 
to deal with this most sacred of all relations, a man's religion. 

The evangel that will grip the lives of students today must 
break down this unfriendly, unsocial attitude of mind. The 
inside of the cup must be clean also. Men can illustrate 
better by example what a Christian gentleman can be than 
they can by any line of argument. To incarnate the wide 
reaches of Christ's sympathy, respect, and regard for the 
personality of others is one of the best antidotes for modern 
Pharisaism. 

The Substitution of Personal Influence for Personal 
Effort 

A gospel that will transform the lives of school and college 
men today must frankly face the difficult problem of personal 
influence. I think now of a man in a large university. He 
never drank, he was not immoral ; yet he did accompany men 
on many drinking parties, and justified it on the ground that 
his personal influence kept them from going to further 
excesses. Perhaps it did. But does not one tacitly assent 



20 PERSONAL EVANGELISM AMONG STUDENTS 

to such practices if he does not persuade men to take a higher 
mode of life ? Will not friendship have failed to produce her 
perfect work if a man does not by personal example and 
thoughtful persuasion urge upon his friends as well as 
himself the best manner of Christian living? A great deal 
of hard Christian effort is escaped by pleading our personal 
influence in lieu of personal effort. What answer can one 
make when years later a friend faces one and asks: "Why 
didn't you speak to me? You had named Christ as your 
Saviour and Lord — yet you never spoke of Him to me. I 
needed help and you lent only your influence." Personal 
influence is invaluable and is not to be deprecated or under- 
estimated; but there are occasions when the spoken word only 
can convey the unmistakable desire of one's heart to the 
heart of a friend. Influence plus the friendly ministry of 
personal evangelism is the strongest possible combination. 

What, then, should be the nature of the gospel for our 
schools and colleges today? It must take its stand firmly on 
the fundamental ground that, in matters religious, reflection 
alone can never be an adequate substitute for action. It must 
decry and expose fallacies, such as special moral codes for 
special groups, as the foe of any permanent spiritual progress. 
It must insist that the main purpose for which men come to 
college shall receive attention; no Christian worker can 
afford to advocate religion that divorces faith and class-room 
work. Superficial arguments about men needing only to be 
"square," which disregard a man's personal contribution to 
the spiritual forces of the campus, must be met by a kindly 
and thoughtful presentation of one's larger social Christian 
responsibilities; no man lives or dies alone today; what he 
has received from the past or present he owes to present and 
future society. Elements of Pharisaism must be analyzed 
and so presented to men that all their unlovely, snobbish 



THE COLLECTIVE STUDENT MIND 21 

selfishness will be seen in its sordid dimensions. Without 
frank and correct diagnosis, it is difficult for physicians to 
heal. 

Lastly, may we suggest that our evangel must tactfully 
point out the fact that personal influence alone is not enough, 
unless possessed by one with the spirit of the Master Friend, 
who knew so well how to unite His influence and His personal 
effort for the salvation of souls. 



CHAPTER III 

TO WHOM ARE WE SENT? 

The Ministry to the Impoverished 

Christ was interested in the impoverished lives about Him. 
The romance of the incomplete to Him was very real. When 
He saw something lacking, He was wont to bring aid. We 
have impoverished men on our campuses today. Into the 
poverty of these fractional lives, is not Christianity sent to 
bring completeness? "To proclaim the gospel to the poor," 
was part of Jesus' program. 

Where are the lives that lack enrichment among students 
today? Some will be found in that group who for some 
reason have never known the blessed companionship of home. 
Many lack the enrichment of that camaraderie between son 
and father which is one of the glories of a Christian house- 
hold. Letters may be rather barren and few in certain 
cases, due to failure on the part of both parents and sons to 
comprehend each other's purposes. Such lives may be 
enriched by reconciliation or by getting students in friendly 
contact with hospitable townspeople or faculty members. 
Many a life, rigid with the unyielding reserve born of im- 
poverished home life, has been expanded and mellowed by the 
cordiality and sympathy of a Christian home. 

Many students are poor in friends; they lack companion- 
ship. The richness which comes to one who finds himself 
the member of a group is never theirs. Unless one has 
experienced it himself, it is difficult to imagine the absolute 
hunger with which many a lonely student regards the saluta- 
tions and other exhibitions of friendship between those with 



TO WHOM ARE WE SENT? 23 

whom he associates, but is not a part. "They are not all 
Israel that are of Israel." There are scores of students 
who matriculated with the hope in their hearts of at last 
finding friendship among men. A discerning eye will locate 
these men and see to it that they are acquainted with those 
who not only give of their companionship but receive in 
return a rich reward of unexpected happiness by entertaining, 
in the person of some lonely fellow-student, an angel un- 
awares. The quiet, shy fellows generally have much to give 
when once the threshold of reserve is fully crossed. There 
is a ministry which will relieve the pauperism of fellowship 
which has descended upon many rare men in our schools. 

A few students are poor in social qualities. Mannerisms 
of speech and dress and action have produced an unfavorable 
impression upon many whom these men would have as 
friends. Often a direct appeal to a man, if made with 
discretion and by the right person, will do much to lead such 
a student to practice a little more social grace and secure for 
him that degree of gentility and courtesy which will cause 
others to see in him a charming personal friend. Effeminacy 
and all foppishness should, indeed, be carefully avoided, but 
wise suggestion regarding all those qualities which char- 
acterize a gentleman is a part of the ministry of any friend 
to students. 

Again, there are students who are poor in happiness. Dis- 
content seems to have taken firm hold of their lives. They 
lack peace. Their existence seems diluted. To bring com- 
pleteness here is a work for friendship to perform. It is a 
real triumph to get a man to "lay hold on life" and make the 
most of it, be he a man of one talent or of ten. To get a 
student out of the bleachers, to incite him to throw off the 
attitude of a spectator, and to encourage him to enter the 
field of action, will many times solve the problem of an 
unhappy college course. One must be led to use his own 



24 PERSONAL EVANGELISM AMONG STUDENTS 

initiative if he is to realize the full measure of happiness 
which college may hold for him. 

The Ministry to the Broken-Hearted 

In the second place, Christ brought healing to the broken- 
hearted. Actual grief is not foreign to any student body. 
Many of the heavier sorrows of life come in student years. 
A member of the home circle has passed away. Perhaps a 
man's sweetheart has died. For him the world seems broken 
up; the sorrow is unbearable. Blessed is the one who can 
stand by at such a time and speak a sure word of hope and 
comfort. Few men resent one's speaking to them about 
their loss. Most men feel a desire to speak to somebody of 
the absent one. Words do help, and help tremendously, in 
such hours. Simply to say that one believes in the resurrec- 
tion and the life brings comfort. To assure a man in sorrow 
that, as his loved one has borne well the image of -the earthly, 
she shall also bear triumphantly the image of the heavenly, 
brings a sense of security to an aching heart. Men are 
tender and responsive in days of grief, and a real friend can 
do much to help a fellowman in his soul's travail. It is a 
Christlike thing to assist a man to 

"Reach a hand through time to catch 
The far-off interest of tears." 

The Ministry to the Sin-Bound 

Jesus also brought deliverance to the captives. To take 
those who are bound by ruinous habits and to help them free 
themselves from that which keeps them from self-respect and 
the esteem of others, is a part of Christ's program. Many 
of our students fall into practices which shear them of power, 
because of the fugitive and fragmentary nature of sex instruc- 
tion given them in their boyhood. One should not only 



TO WHOM ARE WE SENT? 25 

adequately inform, but should also effectively inspire men to 
put forth every effort in the fight for character. The ex- 
pulsive power of new ideas and new habits serves one well at 
such a time. If a man can be led to see first, why a habit is 
disastrous and, second, how he can bring every available 
resource to his aid, he is well on the road to victory. What 
further needs to be done is for some one to release the 
student's will with explosive power as he sets out on a new 
plan of action to replace the bad habit with a good one. 

The Ministry to the Blind 

Christ was concerned that men should see and see clearly. 
He was anxious that the physical eye should function 
properly, and also that the spiritual perception should be 
undimmed. One finds the blind in college, men who have 
lost faith, who do not apprehend as clearly as they once 
did the spiritual ideal of Christ. It is a real achievement to 
stand beside a man who is facing the gaunt apparition of 
intellectual doubt. Tennyson paints the picture of Arthur 
Hallam in such a period of storm and stress: 

"He fought his doubts, and gather'd strength; 
He would not make his judgment blind; 
He faced the spectres of the mind, 
And laid them : thus he came at length 

"To find a stronger faith his own ; 

And Power was with him in the night, 
Which makes the darkness and the light, 
And dwells not in the light alone." 

To enable a student to see again the figure of Jesus Christ 
in all His rugged majesty, which for a period has become 
obscured behind the mist of doubt, is to have the joy of 
restoring sight to the blind. 

Some students are slow to catch a view of the greatness 



26 PERSONAL EVANGELISM AMONG STUDENTS 

of their own college. To instill a sense of appreciation for 
the education which one is receiving is a fine service. One 
should understand something of the degree to which he is 
partaking of the benefit of sacrifices of others, and let his 
appreciation bespeak his willingness to enter into their labors. 
Stories and traditions of the great men of the past, an 
inscription over an archway, a legend in a window, may be 
used to nurture a feeling of partnership in carrying on the 
institution. And it is necessary. "Where there is no vision, 
the people cast off restraint." 

Then, too, some students are blind to their own possible 
greatness as leaders. To get an over-modest and retiring 
soul nerved up to dare to assume leadership, is to get him 
to see himself with new eyes. Jesus said: "Neither do men 
light a lamp and put it under the bushel, but on the stand; 
and it shineth unto all that are in the house. Let your 
light so shine !" Kindle a man's heart with the spirit of that 
verse and he will not lack vision of his own worth. Browning 
realized the importance of this courage to initiate when he 
wrote : 

"Are there not . . . 
Two points in the adventure of the diver, 
One — when, a beggar, he prepares to plunge, 
One — when, a prince, he rises with his pearl? 
Festus, I plunge!" 

The Ministry to the Bruised 

The bruised folk were much upon the Saviour's heart. He 
had compassion on them. The care of them was part of His 
program. The bruised we have always with us. One of 
our chief duties as ministers of Jesus Christ is to pour oil and 
wine upon the men with hurt bodies and aching hearts. 
There are a multitude of bruised men about college and 
school ; their name is legion. The careless exterior of a man 
who has received an official warning that his grades must 



TO WHOM ARE WE SENT? 27 

improve or he will be dropped, cannot always conceal the 
pain in his soul. Encouragement is needed. A new spirit 
of patient study, the will to achieve, must be inculcated. The 
friend to students has a work to do here. 

Students not infrequently set their hearts upon securing a 
college letter before they matriculate. Their fathers or 
brothers may have played on the team. After one has done 
his best for months, and sometimes for years, it is no trifle 
to see the last quarter or inning of the last game go by and to 
realize that one's chance for a letter is gone. There is a sense 
of keen disappointment here. Many a man is delicately 
poised between bitterness and an attitude of gameness which 
will bring future spiritual success out of an immediate failure. 
The same applies to any prize for which one has done long, 
consistent work and has met defeat. Any one can say to a 
defeated man: "Tough luck, old chap." The loser is very 
much alive to the toughness of the situation ; it avails little to 
rub salt into an open wound. The friend must be able to 
make clear that out of all the discipline and toil and sweat 
and disappointment one should have become more largely 
capable to strive for even higher prizes. 

Ill health comes to many to bruise them in body and soul. 
Not seldom one sees some choice spirit compelled to leave his 
studies because of the inroads of some malady. No glib 
phrase or shallow words of condolence will bring comfort to 
him who has the heavy hand of disease upon him. He needs 
some one to suffer with him, some one who cares ! There is 
a vast amount of real help which comes with a correct mental 
attitude in sickness. This attitude can be engendered by 
the right sort of encouragement from our friends. "In quiet- 
ness and in confidence shall be your strength"; "Come unto 
me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give 
you rest"; "Be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed, for the 
Lord thy God is with thee whithersoever thou goest"; "The 



28 PERSONAL EVANGELISM AMONG STUDENTS 

eternal God is thy refuge and underneath are the everlasting 
arms"; "He that dwelleth in the secret place of the Most 
High shall abide under the shadow of the Almighty" — these 
and many kindred passages will equip one so that he shall be 
neither barren nor unfruitful as he seeks to be a strong hand 
to a sick man. Let one dwell for a time in the spirit of these 
verses, and it will be strange if he does not find himself pos- 
sessed of those qualities of heart and speech which will en- 
able him to bring aid to the bruised. 

Looking unto Jesus Christ for guidance and power, may we 
not be able to say in great humility, but nevertheless in calm 
assurance, "The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because He 
anointed me to preach good tidings to the poor : He hath sent 
me to proclaim release to the captives, and recovering of 
sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, to 
proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord." 



CHAPTER IV 

SOME CHARACTERISTICS OF STUDENTS AS 
A CLASS 

When one views his school or college parish he must first 
make himself realize, if he is a graduate, that these men are 
as he was. If he is an undergraduate member of the student 
body, he should understand that they are as he is. One 
should never cease to be humble before the least of the men 
to whom God has imparted life. In a peculiar way one must 
realize, too, that in our schools and colleges are gathered 
together much of what is choicest of the young manhood of 
the race. That is one reason why Pharisaism is a peculiar 
ill of university life today. To approach the task of being a 
liaison man between God and students on any campus with 
preconceived ideas, without a careful scrutiny and a thorough 
understanding of local customs and traditions, without a 
wide understanding of the types of homes and temperaments 
therein represented, and without some appreciation of the 
peculiar characteristics of students as a class, is to embark 
upon a supremely important task with a calamitous egotism. 

Individualism 
One is impressed at first by the individualism of students. 
Inasmuch as there is little sameness of thought on the teach- 
ing staff (that is, different instructors may hold radically 
different views of the same theory), the student is not 
confronted with a unified content of knowledge. He is 
encouraged to think for himself, to do his own peculiar stunt 
in athletic or social or literary extra-curriculum activity. 
Especially in college he is free from restraint and allowed 
to come and go as he chooses, guided only by a few rules and 
29 



30 PERSONAL EVANGELISM AMONG STUDENTS 

his own character. Students are peculiarly free from 
responsibility, and many — it may be said, a majority — of them 
lack any definite purpose. 

This individualism is necessary to develop the type of 
character essential for leadership. Only by fostering inde- 
pendence and self-reliance can we hope to secure that 
initiative and moral fiber which in college and in later years 
will fit a man to stand for what is right and just when 
righteousness and justice prove unpopular. Some men, it is 
true, miss the mark in the process of training themselves for 
individual leadership and become careless, irreverent, indif- 
ferent, conceited, and agnostic, and a few become atheistic. 
Yet many of these same men will later prove to be our best 
citizens. College students often assume not only virtues 
which they do not have, but also doubts and intellectual 
difficulties which they do not possess, which are used as a 
camouflage for secret sin or as a ruse to escape moral and 
social responsibility. But there are countless earnest searchers 
for the truth, who like Thomas must be shown the print of 
the nails. Because of the inquiring nature of many of our 
choicest students, it is imperative that men who "bear on 
their bodies the marks of the Lord Jesus" shall live on the 
campus. We need more stalwart Christian examples, men 
who give evidence of the faith that is in them. Thoughtful 
men look for results. "By their fruits ye shall know them." 
In order to enlist the allegiance to Christ of our keenest 
students, we must have consistent Christian men as leaders 
in our work. 

Group Consciousness 

In contrast to individualism, students possess a gregarious- 
ness, a group consciousness which one must also take into 
account. The power of tradition is upon nearly every one. 
Bad traditions are established as easily as good ones. In 



SOME CHARACTERISTICS OF STUDENTS 31 

iour years, a college generation, a bad tradition can be 
formed, and in nearly the same length of time a good tradition 
can become atrophied. One who would understand the life 
of a given college or school will do well to search into these 
inarticulate, informal, unconscious influences that exist in 
the mores. These are the principal governing factors. To 
sow ideas that take root in a college body and grow into a 
tradition that makes for fairness and decency and justice on 
the campus, is one of the greatest contributions which one can 
make to the student life of today. Unostentatiously to leave 
the germ of the plan with a group, watch it grow to fruitage, 
and see it become a power in the life of all who come within 
that group, is to fulfill what was in Paul's mind as he 
discussed the ministry with the Corinthians: "As unknown, 
and yet well known; as dying, and behold we live; as 
chastened, and not killed; ... as poor, yet making many 
rich ; as having nothing, and yet possessing all things." 

This group consciousness has two sides, as has individual- 
ism. In the first place, it tends to conserve the ideals of the 
group at its best ; contrariwise, it tends to develop chauvinism 
and a provincialism which in after life grows obnoxious to 
those who see the good in other institutions. Neither Yale 
nor Minnesota nor Stanford, nor any other school or college, 
has a corner on reliability, trustworthiness, and those qualities 
of sociability and leadership which are dear to every college 
man's heart. 

Idealism 

Students are idealists for the most part. They combine 
judicial deliberation with a quixotic impulsiveness that is hard 
for any who are not in sympathy with the spirit of youth to 
understand. The chivalry in the heart of the student life of 
today, both of the Entente Allies and of the Central Powers, 
has been written in flesh and blood on every front by land 



32 PERSONAL EVANGELISM AMONG STUDENTS 

and by sea and air. Not only has the temper of service and 
sacrifice in the face of important issues shown itself in the 
military, but also it has been manifested in thousands of 
instances on our campuses in athletics and in other ways. 
What college or school has not its own stories — its runner 
who has purposely stumbled in order that another may have 
his last chance to get a letter ; its crew captain who has asked 
to be taken out of the first boat in order that no shadow of a 
doubt might remain as to the best possible crew ; its man with 
defective body who has undergone operation after operation 
until he has at last been accepted for service overseas. 
College spirit is no myth. It is composed of the vague 
memories of a thousand heroic sacrifices. It symbolizes the 
unselfish, the vicarious, the manly. Through it the voices of 
past generations summon men onward. The student life of 
today is idealistic for the greater part. Love for school has 
become a passion with many of our greatest men, who turn 
back to college days and scenes for inspiration in the difficult 
tasks of life. 

"Years ago when I was at Balliol 

Balliol men and I were one, 
Swam together in winter rivers, 

Wrestled together under the sun. 
And still in the heart of us, Balliol, Balliol, 

Loved already, but hardly known, 
Welded us each of us unto the others, 

Called a levy and chose her own. 

"Here is a house that armors a man, 

With eyes of a boy and the heart of a ranger, 
And a laughing way in the teeth of the world, 

And a holy hunger for thirst and danger ; 
Balliol made me, Balliol fed me, 

Whatever I had she gave me again ; 
And the best of Balliol loved and led me, 

God be with you, Balliol men. 



SOME CHARACTERISTICS OF STUDENTS 33 

"Galloping outward into the weather, 

Hands a-ready and battle in all; 
Words together and wine together 

And a song together in Balliol Hall. 
Rare and single ! Noble and few ! 

Oh, they have wasted you over the sea ! 
The only brothers ever I knew, 

The men who laughed and quarreled with me. 

"Balliol made me, Balliol fed me, 

Whatever I had she gave me again, 
And the best of Balliol loved and led me, 
God be with you, Balliol men." 1 

One must not forget that students are for the greater part 
adolescents. At any rate, they pass through, or are passing 
through, this mysterious stage of life at some time during 
their student days. One must reckon with the new ideals that 
come, the affection for the opposite sex, the feeling of 
respect for self as a man and the possibilities for altruism. 
To understand many of the vagaries of students, one must 
have a competent knowledge of the sexual, mental, and 
physical changes that take place in the lives of men at this 

Debonair Dignity 
College students assume a certain amount of debonair 
dignity. Many can be almost heard to say: "Accuse me of 
anything but vulgar enthusiasm." This may seem strange 
if one recalls the seething, yelling bleachers when a touch- 
down is made. However, one must realize that students 
perhaps have more phases of their life constantly exposed and 
developed than any other body of youth. They are wont to 
appear laissez-faire, cynical, nonchalant, philosophical, and 
sensitive to showing emotion, although they may feel emotion 
in sweeping power. This is often caused by a wide reading 
of literature and a certain attraction every young man has 

'Hillaire Belloc, "To the Balliol Men Still in Africa." 



34 PERSONAL EVANGELISM AMONG STUDENTS 

for the Robin Hoods and Francois Villons. The dash and 
roguery of a first-class knave are apt to be a great deal more 
picturesque and delightful to a student than the life of a 
Francis of Assisi. Right here is where a friend to students 
may do some of his best work. Get in contact with some of 
what Frank N. D. Buchman calls the "most interesting 
sinners" on the campus, let them see what you are trying to 
do, show them the romance of downright, healthy, Christian 
living, and you may by God's grace combine the dash, color, 
and spirit of chivalry with the sturdy qualities of thoughtful 
Christian manhood. Youth cannot be crowded into the 
religious forms of men of fifty. Goodness must be made 
interesting at eighteen ! The lads in "long ulsters," as 
Drummond used to designate them, are very often the choicest 
spirits on the campus. Would a word of caution be in place 
here? Let no man think he is doing the work of personal 
evangelism who is a mere looker-in or hanger-on with the 
popular and influential groups in college. One must know 
what he is set to do, and then, with all the grace he can 
summon, set out to fulfil the great commission. 

The Caste Spirit 
There is a deal of the caste spirit in our American schools, 
more than there should be. Fraternities often foster this 
feeling. The newspaper prominence of young athletes — a 
prominence which their fathers attained, if at all, at the 
age of forty-five or fifty — disturbs one's value judgments in 
student days and may develop conceit and snobbishness in 
certain quarters. Both to the ones who selfishly benefit and 
to the ones who suffer from such a caste situation, Christian 
men on the campus have a sure word to speak. 

Mental Flux 
Students naturally pass through many mental stages. A 



SOME CHARACTERISTICS OF STUDENTS 35 

man who is a devout Christian this spring may be an agnostic 
in the fall. One who was an atheist last year may become 
a Student Volunteer this year. School days are the time 
for gathering facts, and one's mental attitude changes as 
additional facts are taken into his ken. Very often a student's 
thinking will work in a circle. He starts with his simple 
boyhood faith. After a study of social sciences, philosophy, 
and biblical criticism he attempts to formulate a religion all 
his own, but finally arrives at pretty much the accepted view 
of Christians generally. The experience of Gilbert Chester- 
ton, cleverly told in his volume, "Orthodoxy," in which he 
relates metaphorically his efforts to discover a religion of 
his own, is the experience of most thoughtful students. He 
set out to explore for an undiscovered island. After some 
days' journey he saw what was apparently a heathen temple 
upon the shore. He landed and took possession in the king's 
name, only to discover that the temple was a familiar pavilion 
and the land was Brighton Beach ! 

It is well for those who are engaged in the work of 
Christ in student bodies to deal wisely and sympathetically 
with men in search of new religions and help them to redis- 
cover the religion which for a time seemed lost or obscured. 

The student is the most interesting of all men. No other 
has such possibilities of development. No other has revealed 
such versatility. One may visit a college and be led to think 
the undergraduate body lazy, unidealistic, and self-satisfied. 
Let one visit the same college after a call to the colors, and 
he will find the halls empty and the masters humbled by the 
downright heroism of the boys whom they regarded as too 
young to think straight on great moral issues. Your student 
is a wag. He will sit on the fence and poke fun at ortho- 
doxy; but he will die for the principles for which orthodoxy 
stands. He may appear indifferent to religious appeals, and 



36 PERSONAL EVANGELISM AMONG STUDENTS 

yet no conferences year after year attract so many of him as 
the Christian Association Conferences at Silver Bay, Seabeck, 
and in other parts, as well as the huge quadrennial gatherings 
of the Student Volunteer Movement. 

Such are the men of our schools, these "happy lords of high 
futurity/' gay yet tender, a host of whom but await the sure 
commission for the Quest of the Holy Grail. 



CHAPTER V 
THE PROCESSES OF FRIENDSHIP 

The most effective method of approach to the student mind 
has been already characterized in a preceding chapter as the 
tactful guidance of initiative through the processes of 
friendship. That such processes exist and are capable of 
definition and cultivation, few men would deny. Yet on no 
subject is the thinking of school and college men apt to be 
more confused than on the general subject of friendship. 
The question was recently put to a group of Seniors in one 
of our universities : "Why should men go to college ?" After 
they had discussed and rejected all the other motives sug- 
gested by members of the group as incomplete or unworthy, 
they finally agreed upon the answer: "To get friends"; and 
this seemed to them to embody all that was highest and best 
in college aspiration. They probably meant more than they 
had said. Yet, as stated, what more selfish ideal could have 
been advanced? Is it a worthy ideal for men to come to 
school or college to get friends, to pick associates on the basis 
of what they can contribute to one's life, to develop a little 
coterie of patrons whom one can "ride" for personal advance- 
ment, or cultivate for personal gratification and profit? Not 
one of this selected and gifted group of men suggested that he 
had come to college to be a friend. And yet the difference 
between these two points of view — the one, of getting friends, 
and the other, of being a friend — is the difference between 
the poles of human existence. It is the difference between 
selfishness and love. 

What is the underlying motive in the ministrations which 
we render to students in the name of Christ? Is it to get 
37 



38 PERSONAL EVANGELISM AMONG STUDENTS 

friends or to be friends? Although he could not define it 
clearly, there was nothing which the American soldier de- 
tected more quickly or to which he reacted more positively, in 
the ministrations of the welfare agencies which had charge 
of his comfort during the war, than the motive which under- 
lay that service. Was it disinterested on the part of the min- 
ister, or was it for the latter's own aggrandizement or for that 
of his organization ? The doughboy instinctively knew. The 
tragedy in the professional life of many teachers in our 
schools and colleges, who crave to be known as popular, is 
that they have not yet grasped the truth that a man may 
have friends in the popular sense, as evinced in large elective 
courses, where numbers have been secured by compromise of 
standards or in other ways, without being a friend in the true 
sense to a single one of these students. Let us clearly under- 
stand at the start in any discussion of the processes of friend- 
ship, that we are not concerned with the selfish and easy art 
of getting or holding friends. Our concern is rather with 
the difficult and costly art of being a friend. 

We have intimated that a man can have friends without 
being a friend to any one in the world, and that in this fact 
lies the real tragedy of life; for the real tragedy of life does 
not consist in being friendless. It consists in being unfriendly. 
In the converse of this proposition lies the real romance of 
living, namely, that a man can be a friend without, at the 
start, having 3. friend in the world. This was true of Him 
who came unto His own when His own received Him not. 
It is the great and inspiring thought that has led men from 
the beginning of time into the dark places of the earth to face 
misunderstanding and hostility, but ultimately to triumph. I 
may be friendless, but no one can compel me to be unfriendly. 
The art of being friendly consists in practicing constantly, 
persistently, sacrificially, at whatever cost, the processes of 
friendship. Four of these were mentioned by Jesus — the 



THE PROCESSES OF FRIENDSHIP 39 

gifts of a friend, the self-revelations of a friend, the wounds 
of a friend, and the sacrifices of a friend. 

The Gifts of a Friend 

There is a passage from our Lord's teaching preserved in 
the gospel of Luke which many have declared to be absolutely 
impracticable in its application to modern social conditions. 
As a matter of fact, no teaching of His puts more clearly the 
fundamental practical principle which must be applied to the 
social conditions of today, if life and relationships are to be 
made normal. The passage in question is Jesus' "Lesson 
regarding Guests": 

"When thou makest a dinner or a supper, call not thy 
friends, nor thy brethren, nor thy kinsmen, nor rich neighbors ; 
lest haply they also bid thee again, and a recompense be made 
thee. But when thou makest a feast, bid the poor, the 
maimed, the lame, the blind: and thou shalt be blessed: be- 
cause they have not wherewith to recompense thee: for thou 
shalt be recompensed in the resurrection of the just." 

This is the law which underlies the first and fundamental 
process in the art of being a friend. In all the social relation- 
ships of life, the rule which should govern our action is not 
what we get, but what we can give. Jesus never confined his 
definition of poverty to those who were without money, or 
his definition of maimedness or lameness or blindness to 
physical ills. The rich neighbor whose wealth is the talk of 
the town may be impoverished and destitute in ideals, and the 
able scholar whose physical eye can detect at a glance the 
single error in a closely printed page may have the blind 
eyes which see not in matters spiritual. There are few kins- 
men or brethren of ours who are not poor in the affection we 
have bestowed on them, or maimed through our neglect, or 
lamed because of our lack of support in the hard work of life, 



40 PERSONAL EVANGELISM AMONG STUDENTS 

or blinded because their lives have been without the light of 
revelation which our different experience, if imparted, might 
have given them. Jesus neither in precept nor in practice 
barred from His circle the rich or the poor, the relative or 
the stranger, the influential or the needy, but the principle 
which He observed, and which He bade us observe in all 
social relationships, was this — that real friendship is give 
rather than get, and that our contacts with men should be 
arranged and carried through not on the basis of what we can 
get out of men, but on what we can give to them. 

The gifts of a friend! You and I can be friends only to 
those to whom we can give something — something needed — 
sympathy, courage, cheer, ideals — at times material assistance 
of money and clothes and food. These things will cost, and 
what we give will go forth from us not to return. The test is 
this: when the contact is over, whether made in the halls of 
plenty or in the narrow ways of want, is the man richer, more 
complete, more vigorous, and with an eye that sees what it did 
not see before, because of his contact with us? If so, we have 
learned and practiced the first of the processes of friendship. 

The Self-Revelations of a Friend 

The costly process of self-revelation was the second key 
which Jesus revealed to the hearts of men : 

"No longer do I call you servants ; for the servant knoweth 
not what his lord doeth : but I have called you friends ; for all 
things that I heard from my Father I have made known 
unto you." 

No one who has not shared the confidences of men can 
even dimly appreciate their hidden craving to know the 
secrets of the power of other lives and to get at the philosophy 
of life of those whom they respect and would like to love. 
The passing of autocracy in education, with the resulting 



THE PROCESSES OF FRIENDSHIP 41 

democratic give and take between pupil and teacher, the 
genuine desire of the industrial worker to see the "boss," to 
have him human and to know more of his life and experi- 
ences, do not have their roots entirely in the desire for higher 
marks or better pay. There is a more fundamental reason for 
Jesus' insistence on confession and witnessing before men, 
than a mere technical requirement for entrance into an 
organized group. We have already hinted at it. The real 
source of most progress in life is imitation of those whom 
we trust. Confession and witnessing are self-revelation. If 
the progress of men is definitely related to their opportunity 
for imitation of ideals, revealed to them by those to whom 
they look up, then failure on the part of leaders to disclose 
these ideals to others is not a matter of option. It is evasion 
of duty. 

We are told that "Amiel was a professor at the University 
of Geneva, yet he never dared teach his own life to his 
students, and so he read over year after year a dull routine 
of philosophical lectures, and the students never dreamed 
that under the shell of the scholastic professor was a live 
man hungering for love and truth, yet not quite daring to 
live." 1 But such was not Jesus' way. He revealed freely 
to men his most precious experiences — all things which He 
heard from the Father — spiritual crises and temptations as 
well as triumphs. How should we have ever known of the 
Temptation and of Gethsemane if He had not told these lonely 
soul-struggles of His to men? There were no human 
witnesses to the Temptation, and the three who were present 
at Gethsemane were asleep. Jesus could have kept these 
secret soul-experiences of His as silent as the grave had He 
so chosen. But He willed otherwise. 

Self-revelation saves men because it invites an answering 
revelation from those to whom we reveal ourselves. Sin 

1 Griggs, "Moral Education," p. 28. 



42 PERSONAL EVANGELISM AMONG STUDENTS 

cannot long thrive, except in loneliness. But self-revelation 
is also costly — and that is why we do not more often practice 
it — because with this answering revelation which we have 
called forth, we take on ourselves the sin and burden of th 
one whose limitations we know. We are pledged by a certaii 
noblesse oblige to help and comfort and sustain him till he 
shall have traveled the difference between what he is and 
what, through the revelation of an ideal, he may become. 
And this takes time and thought and love, and time and 
thought and love are things which cost. 

The Wounds of a Friend 

The third of the processes of friendship which Jesus re- 
vealed cuts deep to the realities of life. It is probably the 
least practiced and the most needed of the four. The sages 
of Israel clearly recognized it in such proverbs as, "Faithful 
are the wounds of a friend" and "Iron sharpeneth iron; so 
a man sharpeneth the countenance of his friend." Jesus put 
the same truth in words no less direct and incisive. "Ye are 
my friends," he said, "if ye do the things which I command 
you." The word "command" is not a gentle one. It implies 
an insistence upon ideals, and a refusal to compromise in 
matters of truth and duty. It raises squarely the issue of 
real friendship — are we willing to lose having a man as our 
friend, with all we might get from it, in order to be a true 
friend to that man in giving him exactly what he needs? 

Two classmates in one of our American colleges sat side 
by side in the recitation room. They were members of the 
same fraternity and greatly enjoyed each other's company. 
One was a careless, shiftless, attractive youth, who studied 
little and at examination time was constantly forced to use 
dishonest means to pass the term paper. His chum prepared 
his lessons faithfully and never needed or employed such 
help. As term after term went by the faithful student 



THE PROCESSES OF FRIENDSHIP 43 

watched the habit of dishonesty grow upon his mate, and he 
was tempted again and again to talk the matter over with 
him, but always refrained on the ground that he might lose his 
friendship. They graduated and went out into the world. The 
youth who had cribbed soon secured a business position of 
great responsibility through a rich fraternity mate, and for a 
time prospered. And then, one day his accounts were discov- 
ered to be many thousands of dollars short. He fled and ended 
his life by his own hand in a distant state. That life, with 
all its possibility to society, was lost. And this thought stiH 
haunts the chum: Would it not have been worth while if he 
had been willing to lose a friendship in order to be a friend ? 
When Jesus looked upon the rich young ruler, He loved 
him. How much it would have meant to our Lord to have 
had the support and stimulus of the constant companionship 
of this soul of finer sensibilities, in His little circle of rough 
and uncouth disciples ! But because Jesus really loved the 
lad, He dared risk the chance of having him as a friend in 
the process of being a friend to him. So He told him the real 
truth — "Go and sell." We make a great mistake to infer 
that the rich young ruler was lost because he turned away 
from the first statement of this hard truth. Jesus lost him, it 
is true, from a temporary association ; but no one who has had 
the experience of having had the truth told to him in love 
believes that the young man ever forgot what Jesus said. 
Again and again he thought of it; it refused to leave him; 
it clung* to his conscience because it had been energized and 
vitalized when it was given with the love of a friend which 
sticketh closer than a brother. Again and again he tried to 
obscure it with specious arguments. Finally he experimented 
a little with it, timidly, cautiously, not letting any one know, 
and sometime, we are sure, perhaps on the day that he looked 
upon that patient suffering form on the cross later in the 
year, the whole thing broke, and the thought he dreaded and 



44 PERSONAL EVANGELISM AMONG STUDENTS 

could not escape, because it was a shaft of undying friend- 
ship, became what he loved and passionately willed to do. 
The wound of a friend had cut deep, till it released the captive 
soul of a man and made free what neither the gifts nor the 
self-revelation of a friend could reach. 

The Sacrifices of a Friend 

But I do not believe that friendship had its perfect work in 
the lad whom Jesus loved and who turned away, till the boy 
had looked upon Calvary. There is a final mystery in the 
practice of friendship, and it is this: that we can still be 
friends to those who no longer call themselves our friends. 
After we have given to friends, and revealed ourselves to 
friends, and even after we have wounded friends, we can still 
die for them. And this is the fourth and last of the processes 
of friendship. "Greater love hath no man than this, that a 
man lay down his life for his friends," said Jesus. "I, if I 
be lifted up from the earth, will draw all men to myself." 
Material gifts count for much in our ministry to men; self- 
revelation for more; truth will cut deep to the captive souls 
of some men, when the first two processes have failed; but 
there is one process before which the most hardened breaks 
down, and that is to see another suffering undeservedly for 
what he himself has done. It is the mystery of the process 
of atonement. 

Atonement is the costliest process of all, and it should 
always be the inseparable complement of the wounds of a 
friend. After we have wounded one in love we should will 
to be wounded for him. Such a process expresses itself in 
many forms. To find the special form which it should take 
in any given case, one asks himself such questions as these : 
How much physical inconvenience, in loss of sleep and food 
and recreation, am I willing to undergo for the sake of this 
man? How much financial loss? How much reproach of 



THE PROCESSES OF FRIENDSHIP 45 

men am I willing to bear to associate with him still and serve 
him in his unpopularity? And the law of the sacrifices of a 
friend answers "Not seven times, but seventy times seven." 
But it is an invincible process. He who is willing to 
practice it constantly, persistently, at whatever cost, has 
learned the secret of the atonement and the meaning of those 
triumphant words which assert that there are no impossible 
cases in soul-transformation — if a man be lifted up on a 
cross, he draws all men unto himself. 



CHAPTER VI 
THE GOAL OF THE PRACTICE OF FRIENDSHIP 

We have already defined evangelism a3 the art of helping 
men in their quest for complete living, and personal evangel- 
ism as the attempt to assist men in attaining that goal through 
the processes of friendship. In the preceding chapter we 
have considered what some of these processes are, their 
costliness as well as their compelling power, as revealed in 
the life and teaching of Jesus. It remains for us to consider 
what we mean by complete living — the abundant life, which 
Jesus set as His goal in His practice of friendship among 
men, and which He intended should be not only every human 
being's birthright but also his actual achievement. 

No thoughtful man can look into the eyes of a group of 
school boys or college men as they stand on life's threshold, 
eager, ingenuous, responsive, with powers unabated, without 
picturing to himself in fancy what they may become. Some 
are to make a success of life; others, complete or partial 
failure. So much is sure. But no man, not the most skilled 
analyst of human character, can predict in which of even 
these two broadest of divisions — the successes or the failures 
— any one of the group will be found when life's work is done. 
Gladly would we give our all to make just this one funda- 
mental choice between success and failure for even the least 
of the group, but this we are sadly conscious we cannot do. 
The least of these is master of his fate. He "inherits from 
thousands, from hundreds of thousands of ancestors. The 
blood of many families and tribes and races is mingled in 
his veins. There are many men potential in every man, and 
which of them is to emerge he chooses for himself by a 
46 



GOAL OF PRACTICE OF FRIENDSHIP 47 

thousand silent moral preferences." 1 Before the sovereign 
power of decision of a lad of seventeen, we stand helpless. 

God's First-Best Plan for Every Life 
But far more sobering than the thought of what the boy 
may become in the ordinary course of events, is the considera- 
tion of what he may have been intended to become in God's 
first-best plan for his life. This lad who sits before me with 
the intuitive response to a new truth as I speak, but whom ten 
years from now I may find a blear-eyed club man in some 
great metropolitan center, cynical, restless, indifferent to all 
higher aspirations, may have been the man whom God had 
selected as His human instrument to reveal the cure of cancer 
to mankind. We speak often of genius, but what, after all, 
is genius but some new combination of the inherited traits of 
our forbears? Each fresh aggregation of inherited traits, as 
it emerges in the birth of a human being, was intended to 
function in a peculiar way and to make its distinct contribu- 
tion to the life of the world — not necessarily through a 
meteoric career as viewed by the public eye, but through an 
extraordinary life, peculiar, personal, which will accomplish 
something which no one else was quite able to do, whether 
at a merchant's desk like George Williams, or on fishing boats 
like Dr. Grenfell, or in some isolated rural community like 
William Barnes — a career with its sense of achievement, and 
its joy of service, and its final satisfaction of functioning. 

And when, after the slow process of centuries, a peculiar 
combination of inherited traits has converged in a human life, 
a combination which will enable that special life to function 
as a discoverer, this is a tragedy of human existence, that that 
life should deliberately choose not to discover but should take 
some other path; or when another and different combination 
from other ancestors has converged in another life, produc- 

x Van Dyke, "The Gospel for an Age of Doubt." 



48 PERSONAL EVANGELISM AMONG STUDENTS 

ing the gift to transform corporate life through the application 
of discovery, this likewise is tragedy, that this second life 
should choose not to transform corporate life but should will 
to stumble along with other aims on some other paths far 
below. And a suffering world must wait, and a loving God 
must patiently go through the long and delicate process of 
making again, from traits converging through many genera- 
tions, and always subject to the decisions of capricious human 
wills, a potential discoverer, or a potential transformer of the 
corporate life of men. 

Helping Men to Choose the Best 

This, then, is fractional living — that a man should miss 
God's first-best plan for his life and should choose a life the 
motive of which is not service but the gratification of self- 
indulgence or greed or pride. 

And this is complete living — that a man who was intended 
to be a discoverer should will to be a discoverer and become 
one ; and that a man who was intended to be a transformer of 
corporate life should will to be and to become such a servant 
of his fellowmen. 

And this is the glorious privilege of a friend: to help a 
man — whether by gift, or by self-revelation, or by a wound 
that cuts to reality, or by the sacrifice of one's self — to choose 
the path in life that leads to God's first-best plan. And if, 
when that friend has found this highest path, he slips from it 
on to the lower trails of self-indulgence, or greed, or pride, 
to help him to mount again by a sure Way on to the higher 
road. 



PART II 

THE PRACTICE OF FRIENDSHIP AMONG 
STUDENTS 



"What constitutes a school? 
Not ancient halls and ivy-mantled towers, 

Where dull traditions rule 
With heavy hand youth's lightly springing powers; 

Not spacious pleasure courts, 
And lofty temples of athletic fame, 

Where devotees of sports 
Mistake a pastime for life's highest aim; 

Not fashion, nor renown 
Of wealthy patronage and rich estate ; 

No, none of these can crown 
A school with light and make it truly great. 

But masters, strong and wise, 
Who teach because they love the teacher's task, 

And find their richest prize 
In eyes that open and in minds that ask; 

And boys, with heart aglow 
To try their youthful vigor on their work, 

Eager to learn and grow, 
And quick to hate a coward or a shirk: 

These constitute a school, — 
A vital forge of weapons keen and bright, 

Where living sword and tool 
Are tempered for true toil or noble fight ! 

But let not wisdom scorn 
The hours of pleasure in the playing fields : 

There also strength is born, 
And every manly game a virtue yields. 

Fairness and self-control, 
Good-humour, pluck, and patience in the race, 

Will make a lad heart-whole 
To win with honor, lose without disgrace. 

Ah, well for him who gains 
In such a school apprenticeship to life : 

With him the joy of youth remains 
In later lessons and in larger strife !" 

Henry van Dyke. 



CHAPTER I 

SOME ESSENTIAL QUALIFICATIONS FOR THE 
PRACTITIONER 

A survey of the field of personal evangelism in school and 
college would naturally follow three lines: first, the work 
of the Secretary of the Young Men's Christian Association; 
second, the personal efforts of one student in behalf of 
another ; and, in the third place, the endeavors of the faculty 
members to bring the kingdom of God to the hearts of 
students by their own ministrations. 

In taking into consideration the work of personal evangel- 
ism, several outstanding qualifications essential for all three 
types of workers claim our attention. No one can approach 
this subject effectively save in the most humble frame of 
mind, glorying in nothing except the winning power of the 
Christ. However, there are matters of preparation which 
will prevent many failures if we but know and practice them. 

They who lead the flock must fight the wolf. The good 
shepherd calleth his own sheep by name and leadeth them out 
and goeth before them, and the sheep follow him, for they 
know his voice. The spiritual leaders of the campus can do 
no better than be good shepherds, leading out and going 
before in realms both intellectual and spiritual. 

Souls are not won by any rule of thumb. Students are not 
strengthened in their spiritual life by the use of any formulae. 
A stalwart Christian, who shall abide in sunshine and storm 
alike, seldom springs forth in the full panoply of the religious 
faith. One must study the religious psychology of the group 
with which he is working to achieve the best results. The 
5i 



52 PERSONAL EVANGELISM AMONG STUDENTS 

suggestions of the present chapter are only indicative of the 
many elements that should constitute the mental and spiritual 
equipment of him who is minister among students. 

Experience 

In enumerating the outstanding qualifications for personal 
evangelism in school and college, one does well to begin with 
that prerequisite for all successful work with men, experience. 
A doctor does not need to have his arm broken to be able to 
set the shattered limb of another: there are many moral 
failures whose scars one need not bear to be God's servant 
to men, but there are certain spiritual experiences which one 
must undergo before sympathy and understanding can come 
which will fit a man for the high service of personal 
evangelism. 

There are qualities of soul which one can acquire only from 
daily steadfastness against agonizing and persistent vexations. 
For one who has not actually or vicariously experienced the 
depth of grief which on occasion seems to press men to the 
ground in the poignancy of its heaviness, for such a one to 
ask a man to be reconciled to God may border on imperti- 
nence. One must know whereof he speaks in this task. 

The idea that the major hardships of life come only to 
mature people is not always true. Many students are faced 
with the loss of some of the fairest hopes in life. It requires 
fineness of soul to stand next to a man as God's spokesman in 
such hours, such fineness as can come only by thoughtful 
consideration of the immensity of such afflictions. There are 
some losses which simply cannot be laughed off. No amount 
of cheerfulness alone can banish some despondencies. In 
such cases the living testimony of a man who incarnates 
fortitude and spiritual endurance is a tremendous help to a 
student who is groping about to find an explanation for the 
blow that has descended upon his life. The experienced man, 



SOME ESSENTIAL QUALIFICATIONS 53 

the man who feels and understands and sympathizes, is the 
only man who is competent to aid in such situations. 

Acquaintance with the Sources of Divine Power 

In addition to experience in the hard places of life, one 
must add an acquaintance with the sources of divine power. 
A real soul winner must know God. The conviction that 
God is, and that He cares, cares tremendously, for the last, 
least specimen of manhood on the planet, must be unshaken 
in the thinking of the personal evangelist. The dealing of 
God with men, the depth of the riches of love in Christ 
Jesus, must be a living reality to him. He must be per- 
suaded that "neither death, nor life, nor angels, nor prin- 
cipalities, nor things present, nor things to come, nor powers, 
nor height, nor depth, nor any other creature, shall be able 
to separate us from the love of God, which is in Christ Jesus 
our Lord." He it is who can say with his whole heart: "I 
know him whom I have believed, and I am persuaded that he 
is able to keep that which I have committed unto him against 
that day." 

To know the ways of life, its joys and triumphs and diffi- 
culties, and to know at least some of the ways of God in His 
dealings with men in need, is part of what is comprehended 
when it is asserted that one must speak out of his experience 
if one is to convince men in regard to the central truths of 
the Gospel. 

Constant Cultivation of the Spirit of Youth 

Another important factor in the success of many teachers 
and secretaries in our schools and universities is the spirit of 
youth. No matter what the age of the worker may be, he 
will fail if he loses the ability to see through the eyes and 
hear through the ears of the enthusiastic young men who 



54 PERSONAL EVANGELISM AMONG STUDENTS 

crowd back in the fall from mountain and plain and sea, 
from factory, from farm, and from camp, to take up their 
studies. 

To catch and to keep the youthful point of view, to see 
problems from its angle, to understand thoroughly that 
what may seem trivial and negligible to the gray-bearded 
professor may in very fact be the factor which will turn a 
life from good to bad, is a necessary quality. Small events 
are important in their consequences at any age, but they are 
doubly so at an age when the boy is becoming the man and 
when the young man is accepting the responsibilities of 
maturity. The over-sensitive dignity which comes with 
adolescence, the self-reliance amounting almost to pugnacity 
due to increased ability to do things, the chivalrous instincts 
often crudely covered up by a brazen exterior, will all be 
both understood and appreciated by the man who keeps 
warm within him the spirit of youth. Let one add unto him- 
self the wisdom which comes with age, but the heart of the 
barefoot boy, the visions and air castles of the sixth-former, 
the camaraderie and honor of classmates, the spirit of youth — 
let these precious possessions be locked in the treasure house 
of a man's soul. 

Loyalty to Truth 

Along with experience, one may well add truth as an 
essential feature of all successful religious endeavor. Let 
one testify to what he has seen and heard. We have "not 
followed cunningly devised fables." There is enough of 
interest and of spiritual power and persuasiveness offered to 
each of us if we are but willing to receive it. The use of 
words and phrases, even biblical ones, to express our experi- 
ence is dishonest unless we have actually realized in our own 
lives the identical features such words portray. The truth 
told in love is the greatest solvent of difficulties, and the 



SOME ESSENTIAL QUALIFICATIONS 55 

finest eradicator of small sparring maneuvers, which lead 
nowhere unless it be to unprofitable arguments. 

Persistent Mental and Spiritual Endeavor 

One is obliged to add hard study and work as features of 
the evangelist's preparation which must not be overlooked. 
It is the man with the well-furnished mind who is attractive 
to students today. To know the contents of the Bible 
thoroughly, to be able to pick out the special treasures in its 
passages, is part of the equipment needed. This takes patient 
study. To be useful to the students of this generation, one 
must be intellectually their equal. Let one have added to 
religious fervor a knowledge of life and of God and of men, 
and he can by divine grace fulfil his ministry. 

We would suggest, also, the habit of spiritual endeavor. 
It is strange how exceptions to the habitual performances 
of one's life soon wreck the whole system. To work effec- 
tively and naturally, one must work habitually. Trumbull's 
resolution that he would make the "theme of themes" the 
topic of his conversation every time the opportunity offered, 
soon furnished him with a habit which enabled him to do the 
phenomenal work which he accomplished. One can at least 
gain the habit of attempting in this high capacity, and it will 
be strange indeed if out of such efforts triumphs are not 
forthcoming. 

The Practice of Sympathy 

To temper and blend the qualities above mentioned, we 
would name as a further element a wide and deep sympathy. 
No mere sense of duty will avail here. Nothing but love, pure 
and undefiled, will send a man through rain and sleet, often 
when dog-tired, to carry the simple but majestic message of 
physical, social, mental, and spiritual salvation. There must 
be an abundant, overflowing fondness for men to carry one 



56 PERSONAL EVANGELISM AMONG STUDENTS 

through to success in such a ministry as we propose in 
personal evangelism. 

Such a sympathy bids one to be too serious ever to be cheap 
or superficial or tawdry, no matter how genial and friendly 
he may be. It must be a sympathy which will guard one 
from stalking rudely into the secret chambers where only 
the possessor has the right to bid one come. It saves one 
from being clamorous where blessed silence is needed most. 
The sympathy born of love keeps one from intruding into 
premises meant only for God's occupation, but at the same 
time it gives a holy courage which furnishes the strength 
needed to do what God meant friends to do for one another. 
One can sin by silence as well as trespass by over-speaking. 
There is a time to refrain from speaking, but let us not take 
shelter under this truth to excuse ourselves for not doing 
fully and gladly those things which can and ought to be 
done by friends, one for another. The etymology of the 
word "sympathy" reveals its inward content, "suffering with." 

Living the Truth That Is Preached 

After one has sincerely attempted to incarnate the prin- 
ciples suggested above, we would name the old principle of 
personal example as one of the essential qualifications for this 
work. There probably never has been a really lasting piece 
of Christian service without the power of some sturdy Chris- 
tian man or woman who has lived or has honestly attempted 
to live the Christian life at its richest and best. Let any 
one who is placed in a position of spiritual leadership examine 
himself, for his work will rarely result in anything higher 
than his own spiritual level. God needs men to do His work 
here. He needs men who can stand on our campuses in all 
weathers and undergo triumphantly the scrutiny of genera- 
tions of students and have them say : "There is a Christian." 



CHAPTER II 

THE PRACTICE OF FRIENDSHIP BETWEEN THE 

CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION SECRETARY 

AND THE STUDENTS 

In presenting the material for this chapter, let it be clearly- 
understood that no attempt has been made to arrange the 
topics in the order of importance; for who shall say which 
act of thoughtfulness and friendship by him who lives in the 
house by the side of the road — as every student secretary 
must — shall in the end be of most service? No one would 
claim that, in the little catalogue of suggestions which are to 
follow, spiritual decision would be forthcoming if these serv- 
ices were rendered in a perfunctory or uninterested manner. 
For the one who has a hunger to be of use, no service, how- 
ever small or apparently devoid of charm, is wholly lacking 
in those situations wherein a man can manifest the choicest 
virtues which Christ commended. Can a man not do his work 
in such a way that others will be startled by the gentility of 
spirit, the friendliness, and the genuine good will, that men 
will unconsciously cry out in regard to his service, as they did 
concerning the Christ : "We never saw it on this fashion" ? 

In the Office 

Take the work of the Secretary in the office — the answering 
of telephones, the handling of mail, the selling of stamps, the 
care of keys and lockers, and all the rest of office duties— 
as an example for the revelation of the life of Christ 
indwelling in His servants. He should be no ordinarily 
courteous clerk or manager doing politely the duties he is 
paid to do, but rather a gentleman imbued with those inner 
57 . 



58 PERSONAL EVANGELISM AMONG STUDENTS 

qualities of mind and^heart which engage the attention of 
even the most critical and win the confidence and esteem of 
men by the downright grace and dignity of the character 
within. No man need become a mere hander-out of towels 
or purveyor of information who has the will power to train 
himself to be a Christian gentleman in the highest meaning of 
that term. The office has much routine and chore work, but 
it also presents many opportunities for service and for spir- 
itual guidance and help. 

Many times a discussion of one's plans for religious work 
with those who come in will lead to conversation in regard 
to the motive and reason for such endeavor. In all such 
cases where one is allowed to dwell, even though briefly, 
upon the fundamentals of the Gospel and of its propagation, 
there is an opportunity to present the personal claims of 
Christ for the allegiance of every man. We cannot forget 
the many opportunities which have come for real personal 
work through the humdrum tasks of office routine. One must 
refuse to let the system master him. One should be able 
in a trice to drop the work in hand when the chance comes 
to stand as the spokesman of God to some inquiring person 
who has come to the office. 

The Ministry of the Example of Order and System 

The conviction has grown upon us from careful observation 
of religious work, that men who speak out of well-ordered 
lives speak to the greatest advantage. Habits of study and 
little devices of system, schedules of time, arrangement of 
notes, all add to the efficiency of a life. It is a fact that a man 
seldom gives much attention to religion when rushed or 
worried because of inability to get a day's quota of work done 
in twenty-four hours. To show by a well ordered life how to 
work smoothly and effectively is a great lift to many men in 



THE SECRETARY AND THE STUDENTS 59 

our colleges and schools, who seem unable to surmount the 
daily routine and win enough extra time to give attention to 
the things of the spirit. It is a vain effort to attempt the 
development of a four-square Christian character when the 
man is rushed from one half-kept appointment to another, 
or does inadequately the work required by the instructors. 
Such men need advice and help along the lines of time-saving 
methods and such matters, in order to give them that marginal 
amount of time wherein they can consider carefully and 
unhurriedly and conclusively the claims of the Christian 
religion upon them personally. 

Vocational Guidance 

Often the friend of students has the high privilege of 
rendering vocational guidance. If ever one needs wisdom 
from on high it is in those moments in the valley of decision, 
when one sits with a man who is weighing the claims of many 
professions, together with his own capacities to see how and 
where he will invest his life. Here certainly one should not 
unduly persuade, but one can enunciate clearly the funda- 
mental principles upon which a life-work decision should be 
based, namely: a man's capacities, the relative needs, and 
what in his highest and best moments he feels to be God's will 
for his life. Here, too, one can set forth the claims of those 
professions which are sadly neglected these days, teaching and 
the ministry, both at home and in other lands, where the 
need is terrific. The overcrowded condition of many of 
our professions can be pointed out in considering relative 
needs. Much of a man's best work will be done in the hours 
of counsel he will spend with students who are seeking a field 
of service in which they will be happy, useful, and able to 
realize themselves fully. This is a task where no flippant 
generalizations will help, but only the sympathetic aid of a 
well-informed and understanding comrade. 



60 PERSONAL EVANGELISM AMONG STUDENTS 

The Interview with the Man Who Is Down 

In every group of men, and in every man at times, there 
come moments when the devil within us takes possession 
and rides us about as he chooses. In every student body, 
large or small, there will come occasionally an incident in 
which sin in its gross and bestial form makes itself manifest. 
How many a man has been saved after such an occurrence 
from a headlong flight into the depths of debauchery by the 
kindly help of some noble teacher or wise friend ! Men are 
human ; we are victims to the lust of the flesh and the lust of 
the eyes; we are "children of the dragon's teeth." Any one 
who blinks the fact of coarse sin in men is living in a fool's 
paradise. It does exist, and the question is, How can we 
meet it? 

May we suggest, as one of the powerful factors in keeping 
men from falling into gross habits, the fostering in every 
legitimate way of the traditions of men who have prevailed 
against bitter temptations? Nothing helps one in an hour of 
trial quite so much as to know that another man, similar to 
himself, was tempted in like fashion and stuck it out. 

Again, with regard to the man who has indulged himself, 
we would suggest that the Master said: "He that is without 
sin among you, let him first cast a stone." Christ had a 
hatred for sin; He never failed to condemn it and to urge 
men to better lives. But He had an indefatigable love for 
men which was comradely and warm and forgiving, yet He 
constantly exalted the highest virtues ever set before man. 
To stand for truth, honesty, cleanness, and unselfishness, and 
to insist by every act of life and act of friendship that these 
are the primal guides of life and that every life must square 
itself to them or count itself blemished, and at the same time 
to be an accessible, approachable, and faithful friend — this 
is to realize the secret of befriending men who have stained 



THE SECRETARY AND THE STUDENTS 61 

themselves in the mire of human passions. The lcve of 
God continues and is able to save to the uttermost. In His 
spirit and with His tenderness, and yet steadfastly holding 
our devotion to purity, honesty, unselfishness, and love, we 
must cope with the worst cases. If one is too timid to stand 
as friend to the gross transgressors of the laws of God 
and man, he is unworthy to be called friend to any. There 
are many who can do the easy tasks. 

Serving the Bereaved and the Sick 

How often, too, the Secretary can do a really Christlike 
piece of service in cases of grief or of sickness ! There are 
souls to fortify, errands to run, and many little comforts 
to be provided, the need of which one vaguely feels in the 
hours of affliction. The man who can visit the sick and stay 
the proper length of time without boring either patient or 
nurse, who can anticipate the small needs of men in such 
hours, has a sure road to the hearts of the sufferers. The 
One who said, "Come unto me, all ye that labour and are 
heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon 
you, and learn of me ; for I am meek and lowly in heart : and 
ye shall find rest unto your souls," has still the power to heal 
and bless through the ministrations of His servants. With 
the Ancient of Days there is no variableness, neither shadow 
of turning. 

Entertaining the Stranger 

The students who come to us from other lands are for 
the most part unacquainted with people here. They are 
strangers to the whole social setting of our academic life. 
Often a student finds himself the only representative of his 
country in the institution. Herein lies a direct call for those 
whose hearts respond to loneliness and confusion and dis- 
couragement upon the part of others. Among these eager 



62 PERSONAL EVANGELISM AMONG STUDENTS 

spirits from overseas one finds the choice youth of the old 
countries. Here, if anywhere, is an opportunity to reveal 
the meaning of the Christian life in all its phases, bodily, 
socially, intellectually, and spiritually. 

We would suggest that a careful list be kept of all students 
from other lands, and an occasional check-up taken to see 
whether or not some of these who are eager for friendly 
contacts have not been slighted in the rush of student life. 
Never in any field will one find the situation more advan- 
tageous for the presentation of the Gospel of Christ to non- 
Christian men than he will with these men who winter and 
summer with us in the schools of the homeland. 

Material Assistance to the Needy 

Neither would we overlook material aid, properly rendered, 
as being an essential service. We live in an environment 
where men must eat and wear clothes and have books to 
study. If a man lacks these articles, are we to say, "Depart 
in peace, be ye warmed and filled," and not do anything 
for him? Surely Christ provided men with what they 
needed most at the hour of contact with them. We have 
seen many splendid bits of service in which men aided each 
other by money loans, gifts of clothing and of books, and in 
other material ways. Sometimes it takes cold, hard cash to 
translate one's creed into Christian service. The words, "It 
is more blessed to give than to receive," still have a meaning. 
"He that soweth sparingly shall reap also sparingly; and he 
that soweth bountifully shall reap also bountifully." "With 
what measure ye mete, it shall be measured to you again." 
"Lay not up for yourselves treasures upon the earth, where 
moth and rust doth consume, and where thieves break 
through and steal; but lay up for yourselves treasures in 
heaven, where neither moth nor rust doth consume, and 
where thieves do not break through nor steal." 



THE SECRETARY AND THE STUDENTS 63 

A Mutual Third Party between Faculty and Students 
We would name, too, as one of the services of friendship 
which the Secretary can often perform, the reconciliation of 
independent thinkers among the student body to faculty regu- 
lations. Every one familiar with school and college life 
knows how often the need for service of this sort arises. 
Such situations require poise and judgment. A satisfactory 
conclusion of such a matter settles the student's mind and 
leaves him free to work without friction or distraction. 

Peacemaking among College Mates 
The same principles which apply to reconciliation to faculty 
regulations apply to reconciliation of one man to another 
when enmities arise, as they surely will in any body of hot- 
blooded, impetuous youth. "Blessed are the peacemakers, 
for they shall be called sons of God." To get a man to see 
both sides of a question, to realize the just claims of another, 
is often the first step in developing an attitude of good will, 
without which the beauty of living is largely gone and 
strength of character manifests itself chiefly in dogged 
animosity and choleric bitterness. Blessed are the men who 
are able to win men to love one another and to forgive the 
insults and slights, both real and imagined, of which all of us 
are at times guilty. 

Helping the Man Who Misses Out 
For the man left out of fraternities, who feels neglected 
and undone by a system in which he has no voice or control, 
the friend of students should have a message of cheer and 
comfort. No amount of telling a man to "never mind" will 
help him. The best men are taken, and he has been left. He 
will mind, and will worry and go over the matter often for 
scores of sleepless nights, wondering what he has done or 
wherein he is lacking that men have felt no desire for his 



64 PERSONAL EVANGELISM AMONG STUDENTS 

comradeship. Here is a grief that is real and personal. Only 
the power of ideas that expand and crowd out the humiliation 
and grief of it will really be of aid. Students do not care to 
be lulled by words which express sympathy, but do not help. 
A man in such a position needs rather to have given him an 
idea of a new and better struggle in the competition of life. 
Let a student, no matter how keenly disappointed, once grasp 
firmly the idea that it is of more value to be worthy to make 
the best fraternity on the campus than to be taken in regard- 
less of merit, and he will gain new heart. To develop the 
fighting spirit devoid of small animosities, to secure de- 
termination to show one's mettle, to give those suggestions 
which will expand into decisions to work at studies and on 
the athletic field until classmates realize one's real worth, is 
what can effect a remedy in such a situation. 

Finest of all, let one seek to cultivate a certain spirit of 
humility whereby the man in question may gain all the 
strength possible from the hard lesson which has been given. 

One must in some manner show disappointed men the 
successes which often lie in failure. One can do no better 
than to inculcate that spirit of which Browning speaks: 

"One who never turned his back but marched breast forward, 
Never doubted clouds would break, 
Never dreamed, though right were worsted, wrong would 

triumph, 
Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better, 
Sleep to wake." 

The Energizing of Men to Do Their Best 
There are a multitude of situations which have been over- 
looked in this brief survey of the relations between the 
Secretary and the students, but we close with the naming of 
one more field of effort — namely, the difficult task of energiz- 
ing men of all talents to do their best. How many men 
loaf through their student days without realizing for them- 



THE SECRETARY AND THE STUDENTS 65 

selves, or for the school and the world, the powers within 
their lives ! The hold of laziness upon our lives is stronger 
than we often care to acknowledge. This physical and intel- 
lectual hookworm seems to possess men in the days of larg- 
est opportunity for learning. Driving or scolding or exhor- 
tation does little good in such cases. Rather we would sug- 
gest pointing out on proper occasions the difference between 
men who have the habit of failure and those who have the 
habit of success. Few men among our student bodies care to 
feel the cold and justified scorn of that group of students who 
represent the best in any school or college. The laggard may 
in wise ways be led to see the attitude of this group. A great 
many of our rarest spirits, the wags and jesters of school life, 
the men who add the color and life and zest to a party, are the 
victims of the fallacious old doctrine of something for noth- 
ing. Even the salt of the earth may lose its savor. These 
men are not bad at heart; they have, however, fallen into a 
ruinous attitude of mind. The idea of just "getting by" is a 
real evil. To drop in a suggestion of a better struggle, of a 
life of effort with daily successes and daily work, to get men 
to play the game, is an important part of the ministry of the 
Secretary. "For which cause I put thee in remembrance, that 
thou stir up the gift of God, which is in thee through the 
laying on of my hands." 

To those who have let some of their abilities atrophy, there 
comes the challenge which Christ gave to the man with the 
withered hand, "Stretch forth thy hand," and perchance, 
stretching it forth, it shall be restored whole. To energize 
men to do their best, to 

"Strive, and hold cheap the strain ; 
Learn, nor account the pang; dare, never grudge the throe" 

—this is also a part of the labor of the minister of Christ on 
any campus today. 



CHAPTER III 

THE PRACTICE OF FRIENDSHIP BETWEEN 
COLLEGE MATES 

There is a charm about a well lived life which is contagious. 
A certain fragrance attends it. Its presence is noticeable. A 
powerful appeal emanates from the standards a Christian man 
or woman exalts. Such a life is medicinal, helpful, welcome. 
It is in regard to this abundant life, this life which shall be 
as rivers of water in a dry place, this life likened unto a 
candle giving light unto all that are in the house, that we now 
desire to speak. 

Friendship is ever characterized by an abiding good will, 
which manifests itself in the daily contacts between man and 
man. And yet how few genuine Christian contacts are 
made even by classmates in school days. How many men 
pass through our institutions side by side, moving on parallel 
lines which never cross. It would be difficult to overestimate 
the power for good which upperclassmen have upon fresh- 
men. Leadership in student days is a precious and powerful 
possession, for the bent one receives and gives to others in j 
such years very often determines the avenues of future 
growth. 

Upperclass Leadership of Underclassmen 

Small discussion groups of upperclassmen, upon specific i 
themes related to the Christian life, are a great help to many 
new men. It is a powerful stabilizer to an underclassman i 
to see among the Juniors and Seniors many whom he knows 
to be outspoken Christian men. Informal calling upon those 
who are entering for the first time does much to make them 
feel at home. Hospitality is one of the prime virtues of the 
66 



FRIENDSHIP BETWEEN COLLEGE MATES 67 

man who wishes to commend to others the more excellent way 
of Jesus Christ. 

The Opportunities of a Roommate 
In regard to one's own roommate, are there not countless 
thoughtful acts which will show that measure of consideration 
which will make its own appeal ? Many a friendship has been 
pared down and whittled away through incessant borrowing 
and infrequent returning. One must live by his words. 
Small oversights often reveal a major defect. He who 
really cares in his heart will be considerate. There are many 
reasons why one should be considerate of another's property 
and another's time— but one reason is enough for the Chris- 
tian student. Such neglect dissipates one's largest oppor- 
tunities for personal evangelism and makes one a failure 
in the master tasks of friendship. 

One would indeed be negligent to overlook in such a dis- 
cussion as this the principal business of college, namely, study. 
A friend who is a hindrance to study — yea, more, a friend 
who fails to be a stimulus to study — fails greatly in his 
influence. The sideshows of college must not engulf the 
main show. There is a time to play and a time to work. 
Genuine sociability must not be watered down to giddiness; 
superficiality and conversation must not usurp the truly social 
idea, which gives each factor of life its due proportion of 
time. The idea that one gets more out of extra-curriculum 
activity than out of college work is an exploded fallacy 
conceived by lazy or hazy minds. A man who fails to get his 
own studies, or stands in the way of others preparing theirs, 
is a nuisance. No matter how genial, he knows not times 
and seasons as he should. 

In the Fraternities and Other Social Groups 
Fraternities and clubs, often abused and made use of for 



68 PERSONAL EVANGELISM AMONG STUDENTS 

selfish purposes, offer a splendid opportunity for service. 
Where, if not in a brotherhood, should one expect to see 
those qualities manifested which were shown by Him who 
said : "No longer do I call you servants . . . but I have called 
you friends" ? Many men are almost necessarily excluded by 
our fraternity system. The man who is friendly at heart will 
have a care for those who are not on the privileged member- 
ship list, and see to it that selection does not become snobbish- 
ness and tyranny. Every such system should put a premium 
upon ability and character, and leave an avenue of entrance 
open to any man in college who can meet any worthy and 
dignified standard. The Christian man will abide by a 
stringent test for membership, but he will speak and speak 
again against any exclusive charlatanism. It does few men 
ill to be forced to measure up to a high standard, but it is 
social tyranny and bigotry to allow entrenched groups to hold 
a sacred trust, which should be administered in fairness and 
justice for the whole school, at their own caprice and for 
their own peculiar advantage. The welfare of all comes first ; 
the advantage of separate groups is secondary. It is bald 
injustice to cause a man to be unhappy in student days when 
a few well-directed suggestions might enable him to achieve 
that quality of life which will enable him to be a successful 
candidate for a fraternity or club. Such organizations have 
external obligations to the institution in which they exist, as 
well as benefits for their members. A great field lies here for 
successful Christian work. Agreements between fraterni- 
ties, if once made, should be inviolable; or, if unfair, they 
should be amended. 



In Organized Athletics 

One of the primary interests of any school is athletics, and 
justifiably so. Every manly sport teaches a virtue, self- 



FRIENDSHIP BETWEEN COLLEGE MATES 69 

control, ability to "win with honor and lose without disgrace." 
Standards of sacrifice, examples of endurance, instances of 
achievement under great handicaps, anecdotes of success 
under most confusing circumstances — these are potent sources 
of inspiration to vigorous and noble life. In the give and 
take of athletic competition there is wide opportunity for 
showing forth the sturdy virtues for which Christ stood. 
The quarterback who finishes the game with a broken jaw 
will do much to instill the same quality of endurance in other 
men in their lines of effort. The men who play their best for 
four years on the second team, being hammered and battered 
in order that the first team be the right sort, manifest the 
values of those who play the second fiddles in life. The 
Christian man in school athletics has opportunity to stand for 
cleanness and fairness and for the stuff that makes a man in a 
unique way. In a field of effort with an all but universal 
appeal, the athlete can uphold Jesus Christ, whom to uphold 
will draw all men unto Him. 

Through College Journalism 

College journalism, both in its competitions and in its 
editorial utterances, does much to inject the right sort of 
ideals into a student body. The wags and wits of school life 
are the healthy fun-makers of the campus. But let the wit 
be smudged with the suggestive and the vulgar, and it sinks 
to the level of all obscenity. The salt has lost its savor and 
is fit only for the dung hill. Let the student paper speak out 
the best in life to those select few who can find a way to school 
and college, or it fails to do its task. The pen of the student 
editor is a powerful weapon for good or ill, and can be 
used to create those standards of moral excellence upon the 
campus which will make it a fairer field for competition and 
for learning. 



70 PERSONAL EVANGELISM AMONG STUDENTS 

At Class and Alumni Gatherings 

The contests for managerships, the deliberations of student 
councils and committees, all give a place for the exhibition 
of that degree of poise and integrity which characterize the 
Christian gentleman. Neither should one fail to mention 
one's opportunities at class alumni reunions and class 
banquets. Christ was not a stranger to social affairs ; He was 
a stranger neither to the small retreat of three or four chosen 
spirits nor to the crowded marriage feast. He came eating 
and drinking, but He was no glutton or social climber. He 
came to bless each occasion. He had the ability to meet a 
need. Such a ministry can be ours in school and university 
life. 

The Christian gentleman in college can afford to neglect 
no bodily exercise or polite social requirement which will 
render him a better friend and servant. His attire, his table 
manners, his speech, and his daily habits will be under the 
scrutiny of his fellows and will powerfully affect them. He 
who would grow "in wisdom and stature and in favor with 
God and men" can afford to overlook no measures for mental 
or spiritual instruction or bodily grace which will cause men 
to see in him the attractive, engaging winsomeness which the 
Scriptures speak of as being "made not after the law of a 
carnal commandment, but after the power of an endless life." 
His contribution to the spiritual development of his mates 
is essential and unique. No matter how good a staff of pro- 
fessional Christian workers there may be in a school, no 
matter how zealous the labors of the college pastor and 
faculty, the students can still say: "God having provided 
some better thing concerning us, that apart from us they 
should not be made perfect." 



CHAPTER IV 

THE PRACTICE OF FRIENDSHIP BETWEEN 
THE FACULTY AND THE STUDENTS 

In our survey of the practice of friendship among students, 
we come, last of all, to the field of faculty endeavor. It will 
be generally recognized that in treating this division of the 
subject we are dealing with service of a much more narrowly 
circumscribed and highly specialized sort than we have 
heretofore considered. There are many things which a 
student secretary or a class or college leader can do for a 
man, which the faculty member should not be expected to 
attempt. We can perhaps best indicate the limitations and 
the opportunities of faculty effort by contrasting the relation- 
ship to the student body of Young Men's Christian 
Association Secretary, student leader, and faculty member, 
respectively. 

The Young Men's Christian Association Secretary has no 
official relationship to the faculty. He is a leader of volun- 
tary activities, and, as such, his contact with students is 
confined to those who may choose to come to him. His 
function is that of a sort of liaison officer bound to neither 
group — a mutual third party between faculty and students. 
It is quite generally conceded by faculty and students alike 
that initiative both in constructing a program of religious 
activity and in its execution should come from him. He is the 
specialist on the religious life of the adolescent. His outlook 
is broader than the horizon of any one college, since he is the 
trained representative of an intercollegiate movement and he 
is in constant touch with the student life of many colleges. 
Whatever authority he possesses over the undergraduate — 
7i 



72 PERSONAL EVANGELISM AMONG STUDENTS 



and it is often very great — and whatever leadership he 
accorded by the faculty in their efforts, rests on those sul 
tlest of all forces in the capitalization of loyalty — experi- 
ence, character, and personal example. 

The student leader, though possessing practically 
experience and rarely remaining in his position of leadership 
for more than a year, holds his authority over his mates — at 
times almost absolute — by their consent, as expressed in a 
formal election. While they often resent counsel or advice 
coming from one of their own age as "preachy," they demand 
from him consistency in personal living and efficiency in 
execution of their policies. 

In contrast to the above, a school or college faculty is the 
most permanent force on the campus. Its members represent 
both training and experience. By what they say or do not 
say, they are bound to exert a powerful indirect influence 
for good or bad upon their pupils. Under the indirect 
influence of a certain number of these men every student who 
attends the institution is forced, by official regulation, to come 
at stated intervals. Many teachers would gladly make this 
influence more direct, but they are confronted with two diffi- 
culties inherent in the situation in which they find them- 
selves. First, every teacher is a specialist whose primary 
business is to teach his specialty. "The college," says Morris, 
"makes its contribution to civilization from the intellectual 
side; knowledge is the center of it, and the passing on of 
knowledge is the reason for its existence. . . . Knowledge 
does not stand alone . . . ; but knowledge is the thing it 
ought to do; the others are the things it ought not to leave 
undone." Every honest teacher feels that there is a certain 
inconsistency in his taking the meager amount of time 
granted to him for the impartation of the scientific fact which 
he possesses, and for the communicating of which he is paid, 
and putting in its place direct, formal, moral or religious 



no 



THE FACULTY AND THE STUDENTS 73 

instruction or the exposition of his personal philosophy of 
life. In the second place, each faculty member is the repre- 
sentative of a superimposed authority, and this fact makes 
his relations to his pupils formal and official. However much 
this latter fact may be camouflaged by references to a vague 
and impersonal form of invisible government known as "the 
faculty," or by the creation of special officers to whom disci- 
plinary work or the reading of papers is delegated, the fact 
remains that "the faculty" is nothing more or less than the 
individual members who make up the body, and that these 
individuals hold in their hands the granting or withholding 
of the degree which is the only tangible evidence of satis- 
factory work at school or college. 

Surmounting the Difficulties of Specialization and of 
Official Relationship 

We shall gain nothing by refusing to recognize these facts. 
Let us frankly admit that a certain reserve and dignity are 
required of every teacher, and that because of the dangers of 
favoritism and the consequent relaxation in the efficiency of 
training some types of relationship are impossible for him 
which are possible for the student secretary and the under- 
graduate leader. Let us grant that his field of effort will 
probably be much more circumscribed than that of the other 
types of workers. But let us not for one moment yield the 
point that because his effort runs in narrower channels it is 
any less effective; or because it must take unconventional 
forms, it is any less obligatory. The reason why a boy is 
freed from closer supervision in the higher forms of school 
. and in college, is not to give the faculty member more time for 
his private interests. It is because it will be better for the 
boy to develop under the more costly process of friendly 
guidance than under the less costly process of autocratic 
dictation. Training without direct supervision, if it is to be 



74 PERSONAL EVANGELISM AMONG STUDENTS 

effective, requires not less but more time, more thought, more 
sacrifice on the part of each member of the teaching staff. 
The real problem in surmounting the difficulties of rendering 
Christian service to one's pupils under the limitations of spe- 
cialization and in official relationship is not whether one can 
render this service, but whether one really wants to. 

The Practice of Friendship in the Classroom 

The moralization and spiritualizing of every phase of the 
teaching process has never been sufficiently emphasized in 
the teaching profession. "Let a teacher attempt to lighten the 
task of himself or his pupil," says Palmer, "by accepting an 
inexact observation, or slipshod remembrance, a careless 
statement or a distorted truth, and he will corrupt the . . . 
character no less than . . . intelligence. . . . Punctuality, 
order, quiet, are signs that . . . life is beginning to be 
socialized. A teacher who fails to impress their elementary 
righteousness on his pupils brutalizes. . . . Respect, courtesy, 
helpfulness, with their wide variety of combination, form the 
groundwork of all good manners. A school which neglects 
to cultivate them works almost irreparable injury to its 
pupils. . . . By example, friendship, and personal influence a 
teacher is certain to affect for good or ill every member of 
his school. In any account of the school as an ethical instru- 
ment this subtlest of its moral agencies deserves careful 
analysis. . . . That school where neatness, courtesy, sim- 
plicity obtain ; where enthusiasm goes with mental exactitude, 
thoroughness of work with interest, and absence of artifici- 
ality with refinement, where sneaks, liars, loafers, pretenders, 
rough persons are despised, while teachers who refuse to be 
mechanical hold sway — that school is engaged in moral train- 
ing all day long." 1 "What is the real content of religious 
teaching?" asks Hervey. "We answer, Everything. There 

*G. H. Palmer, "The Teacher," pp. 51-63 (passim). 



THE FACULTY AND THE STUDENTS 75 

is no subject in the curriculum, there is no relation in the life 
of the school which is not packed with potential divinity, and 
may not make for morality. Each study and each experience 
has its roots in the infinite, and this basic fact may be felt, 
be seen, be lived, without formal instruction therein. The 
essential principles of Christianity — the fatherhood of God, 
human brotherhood, the infinite worth of a man, loving 
service, abundant life — all these can in every schoolroom 
be lived, felt, and with increasing clearness known, without 
claims, without formal credit, and without the inevitable 
controversies that spring therefrom. . . Wonder and rever- 
ence, dependence and humility, spiritual mastery and faith 
— to nourish and exercise these is as truly the work of 
the school as to prepare for the care of the body, for 
wage-earning, for voting, for rearing a family. And it is 
possible to provide that nurture and exercise, without adding 
a single subject to the present curriculum." 2 In the words 
of Professor Bernadotte Perrin, it is the rare privilege of the 
teacher to make of every recitation an event in the life of his 
pupils. Such an attitude is the attitude of a friend of men. 
Other opportunities arising from the daily contact in the 
classroom will at once suggest themselves. The instructor 
is in a position to know who the men are who are absent 
from his classroom at each exercise, and he is expected to 
discover the reasons for such absence — illness, bereavement, 
the necessity for self-support. Common courtesy requires 
that he take some notice of these facts upon the return of 
the student; but genuine friendship will impel him to go 
further. The teacher is in a position also to evaluate and 
suggest potential moral and religious leaders to the student 
secretary from his daily study of the men in the classroom 
before him. 



2 Hervey, Outlook, Feb. 10, 1906, pp. 317, 318. 



76 PERSONAL EVANGELISM AMONG STUDENTS 

Corrective Discipline as an Act of Friendship 

The opportunities of this nature which present themselves 
to a Dean are obvious. But the best teachers rarely need to 
refer cases requiring discipline to the Dean's office. They 
detect themselves the beginnings of moral lapse, as evinced in 
tendencies toward dishonesty in classroom work or in loss of 
interest in studies. For all such, personal explanation is 
required. Work of this sort is often preventive rather than 
corrective, but the attitude of the teacher toward moral weak- 
ness is never one of indifference. Upon his heart lies the 
burden of the greatest of all teachers, that of those who had 
been given Him, He should lose not one. In the reconciling 
of parents and sons, in the eradication of the fallacy of special 
moral codes for special groups, in the correction of little 
involuntary personal faults of manner and speech, the teacher 
has duties of friendship to perform whose issues are 
momentous in after life. 

The Ministry of Informal Counsel 

Outside the classroom lie the opportunities for a rich 
ministry of friendship. Many of these have their origin in 
the formal exercises of the recitation. The careful reading 
and subsequent going over with the pupil of tests and 
examination papers should furnish a contact which is based 
upon an educational diagnosis rich in revelation of character. 
If it be true that the teacher is responsible for intellectual 
unrest in many men, due to the lack of clearness in his state- 
ments, he should not only feel a moral obligation to undo the 
harm he may have done by welcoming questions and 
answering them patiently, but if he be a real friend of men, 
he will see in all such contacts the real secrets of getting 
quickly to the hearts of men. The student who said, "When- 
ever I ask Professor a question, he acts as if I were 



THE FACULTY AND THE STUDENTS 77 

a bore. I probably am. But he owes something to me. My 
father is paying tuition," had got close to a real moral issue 
involved in the accessibility of teachers to students. The 
chances for the practice of Christian friendship through 
informal counsel, if one is willing to be accessible and to 
regard interruptions as opportunities, are legion. 

It is true that the teacher is a special pleader in the matter 
of vocational guidance, since he represents but one vocation ; 
but this will not prevent him from giving counsel regarding 
the general principles which should guide in the choice of all 
professions. As faculty adviser in fraternity matters or in 
other extra-curriculum student activities, who but a perma- 
nent factor in student life is in a position to recall and 
present as ideals those examples of Christian heroism in the 
unwritten annals of the undergraduate life of past student 
generations? The opening of the home to the foreign 
student, the poor boy, or the outcast, raises no question of 
favoritism. And if once the tradition of accessibility has 
been established during the days of official relationship, the 
contacts for actual personal evangelism with men will con- 
stantly present themselves after the official relationship has 
terminated, when teacher and pupil meet as man to man in the 
later college years or after graduation. 

Witnessing to a Christian Philosophy of Life 

And, finally, though the teacher should not lug Christianity 
into his ordinary formal exercises in the classroom, it is 
equally clear that there are certain occasions when he should 
not avoid the presentation of it. No honest teacher of 
ancient history will evade the fact of Christ when he begins 
the study of the Roman Empire. Much in medieval and 
modern history and in modern literature demands the state- 
ment of the teacher's attitude toward Christianity. To keep 
silent is to deny the Lord. It does not take students long to 



78 PERSONAL EVANGELISM AMONG STUDENTS 

discover whether their teachers are active or passive members 
of churches. To know that a respected teacher is a regular 
attendant at religious service has a tremendously steadying 
effect on most men. The leadership of voluntary Bible 
groups in other college classes than the one in which a teacher 
gives his instruction, or the training of upper-class student 
leaders to conduct discussion groups among one's own pupils, 
obviates the difficulty of direct contact with men with whom 
one has official relations. Naturalness and sincerity are the 
two great guides to one's course of action in every case. 

The teacher is ultimately responsible for the final product of 
a school or college. There is an incident in the life of Horace 
Bushnell, related by his biographer, which every teacher 
would do well to take to heart. In the winter of 1831, the 
most powerful spiritual awakening which had ever visited 
Yale started in the college. Bushnell was an instructor, and 
according to the custom of the time taught all five subjects 
to his special division of men. But he was not at the time 
a professed Christian. "What, then, in this great revival," 
writes Dr. McEwen, "was this man to do, and what was to 
become of him ? Here he was in the glow of his ambition for 
the future, tasting keenly of a new success — his fine passage 
at arms in the editorial chair of a New York daily — ready to 
be admitted to the bar, successful and popular as a college 
instructor; but all at sea in doubt, and default religiously. 
That baptism of the Holy Ghost and of fire compassed him all 
about. When the work was at its height, he and his division 
of students, who fairly worshiped him, stood unmoved ap- 
parently when all beside were in a glow. The band of tutors 
had established a daily meeting of their own, and all were 
united in it but Bushnell. What days of travail and wonder- 
ing those were over him ! None dared approach him. He stood 
far more than primus inter pares among all. Only Henry 
Durant tried carefully and cautiously to hit some joint in the 



THE FACULTY AND THE STUDENTS 79 

armor. But even he, though free in his confidence, seemed 
to make no advance. When, all at once, the advance came 
boldly and voluntarily from Bushnell himself. Said he to 
Durant, T must get out of this woe. Here am I what I am, 
and these young men hanging to me in their indifference 
amidst this universal earnestness on every side.' And we 
were told what he said he was going to do — to invite these 
young men to meet him some evening in the week, when he 
would lay bare his position and their own, and declare to 
them his determination and the decision they ought with him 
to make for themselves. Perhaps there never was pride more 
lofty laid down voluntarily in the dust than when Horace 
Bushnell thus met those worshipers of his. The result was 
overwhelming." 

Today a division of students falls under the influence of 
five men instead of one. But no one of these five can escape 
his share of the collective responsibility for the moral and 
spiritual development of those men who come to him. The 
division of the labor of teaching has made it practically 
impossible for human judgment to place the exact responsi- 
bility for a division of students which remains unmoved ; but 
each teacher himself knows whether he has confessed the 
Lord Christ before men or whether he has denied Him, and 
whether he has fulfilled his obligations as a keeper of brothers 
in those few hours, freighted with such possibility for time 
and for eternity, which he is privileged to pass with men 
"distressed and scattered as sheep not having a shepherd" in 
the restless years of higher education. 



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